


So Tonight That We Might See

by softlyforgotten



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco, The Young Veins
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-22 22:39:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyforgotten/pseuds/softlyforgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adventures and reunions of a spacely sort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Tonight That We Might See

"Motherfucker," Ryan said. "I know that ship."

\---

The auto-control was jamming again, with the result that Brendon was getting jittery and upset and Spencer was being thrown into walls every couple of minutes. It was never a good way to start the day, and Spencer raced up the stairs as quickly as he could, hoping to reach the top before the ship jolted again and sent him flying painfully back down (he had a seventy percent success rate – just, the _Fever_ had a lot of stairs).

By the time he finally got to the bridge, Brendon had moved from interest in fixing the damn thing to annoyance to banging hard on the metal with the heel of his hand, shouting curses at Pete. He turned around when Spencer arrived, folding his arms and glowering. "Your piece of shit ship doesn't want to fly again, Smith," he said, which was how Spencer knew that Brendon was getting really upset; the ship only ever became his exclusively when Brendon was in a mood.

"She does want to fly," Pete put in helpfully, "she's just having a little bit of trouble—"

"I will _shut you down_ ," Brendon threatened, wheeling around to glare at the screen.

Spencer rubbed his eyes. "Maybe this isn't the right time for semantics, Pete," he said, and Pete huffed, flickering away to leave a blue screen. That was another thing that would have to be sorted out, Spencer thought, and they only had a couple of hours to pick up the Union Ambassadors before they got found by the angry citizens of Delta and, Spencer would bet, shot, and really, the day was not shaping up to be a good one at all.

"Brendon," he said, "can you reboot?"

"I've tried that," Brendon said. "Seven times. I have to wait another six minutes before I give it another shot. We _need_ a new transitory-booster circuit – fuck that, we need a mechanic."

"Yup," Spencer agreed. "We're not going to get one."

Brendon made a face. "If we just cut down on some unnecessary expenses—"

"Sure," Spencer said. "You want to go without food, or fuel?" Brendon folded his arms, looking mulish, and Spencer sighed. "We can try and find a second hand transitory-booster after Delta, maybe," he offered, and Brendon twisted his mouth and nodded, reluctantly.

After a moment he tilted his head to the side and said, "You never know, anyway. Maybe one of the Union reps will be one. A mechanic, I mean."

Spencer rolled his eyes. "Most probably," he said, and Brendon's mouth twitched into a small smile.

"It could happen," he said. "Gabe said they'd been on ships before."

"Gabe said that to stop us from quitting for the fifth time in three months," Spencer said.

"I know," Brendon said, grinning. "We're invaluable."

The ship jolted again, and Brendon, who had been balancing precariously on his chair, was sent flying across the room, knocking Spencer off balance so that they tumbled into a corner. Brendon groaned, dropping his head to rest against Spencer's shoulder. " _Ow_ ," he said.

"I know," Spencer said, rubbing his palm in slow, warm circles over Brendon's back. "Come on. Try the reboot."

"Six minutes," Brendon reminded him, and so they sat with Spencer's back pressed against the wall, while the ship shuddered and jerked, juddering its way through space. Finally, Brendon stood up and walked careful back to the controls, typing in a code quickly, eyes narrowed with concentration. The ship hummed, stopping in midspace, and then the low throttle of the engines died to a pleasant whirr and the ship moved smoothly again.

"Eighth time lucky," Spencer said, and Pete appeared onscreen again, grinning maniacally down at them.

"About time," he said, all previous offences apparently forgiven. "Some of my wires were heating up, I thought I was going to short out."

"Mother _fucker_ ," Brendon said, and stood up to go down and give fixing Pete's circuitry a go. Spencer watched him leave ruefully.

"Ready for the new arrivals, Captain Smith?" Pete asked. Spencer sighed, sinking down in his chair.

"I'm not sure it's such a good idea," he said. "Gabe's being dodgy about what he wants – I don't think this is just rescue and return, I think he's trying to set us up for a new mission from here, and it's just. You know."

"Yeah," Pete said. He was still smiling, that big stupid horsey grin, but his eyes were warm and fond, and Spencer knew that Pete wanted a break, too, all of them did, tired of racing from solar system to solar system, trying to get the Union's work done before the next crisis occurred. Years ago, Spencer had thought that winning the revolution and forming the Union of Planetary Alliance would be the hard work; now, he knew with grim certainty that none of that had been half as difficult or dangerous as keeping the Union in place. Some days he doubted anything would ever be done.

"We were kind of promised," Spencer said quietly, and Brendon appeared, coming back into the bridge and sucking on two burned fingers. Spencer watched him absently.

"Just one more trip," Brendon said, having apparently caught the tail end of the conversation. Spencer smiled at him tiredly, and Brendon crossed to him, rubbed Spencer's neck with his free hand. "Hey," he said. "Just one more trip. Easy, too. Pick 'em up, drop 'em off, and then we can run away to a backwater planet and ignore all of Gabe's calls."

"Yeah," Spencer said, leaning back into Brendon's touch, closing his eyes. "Yeah, you're right. It's just – if Gabe tries—"

"Then we'll say, very politely, thanks but no thanks," Brendon told him, voice warm with laughter. "Tell him we can't all be crazy workaholics, and that we haven't had more than four hours sleep in about three years, apart from a month spent in an enemy's cryogenic fridge, which I don't think really counts."

Spencer opened his eyes partially, squinting up at Brendon. "They'll be so boring," he warned.

"They're Union reps," Brendon said, rolling his eyes. "They travel the galaxy, spreading word of the universal peace that could be ours, dabbling in international politics and meeting with some of the most powerful people in the solar systems. Of _course_ they'll be boring. I think we can use a little boring."

"Right," Spencer said.

"Entering the Delta system," Pete told them, and Brendon grinned at Spencer.

"Now get out of my chair," he said.

¬

\---

Spencer hated Delta on principle – because it was overrun by assholes who swore allegiance to the Union and then tried to kill the ambassadors they sent, which meant that Brendon and Spencer got sent off to save them with no more information than a "yeah, they've got communication devices you can ping with a passcode to find their coordinates, bring them back ASAP, please" – but he hated it more when the aforementioned assholes started firing at them the moment they entered the atmosphere.

"What the fuck!" Spencer shouted, as Brendon chewed his bottom lip between his teeth, swerving them around missiles. "We're not marked as a Union ship! Are they just killing everyone, now?"

"The _Fever_ is a familiar ship," Pete told him, in his smarmiest voice, which meant he was enjoying the mortal danger thing way too much. "With over twenty-seven successfully completed missions, and before that its status during the Revolution, you hardly need a Union symbol to be recognised as the harbingers of honour and retribution—"

"Shut up," Spencer said, gritting his teeth. "The moment we get away from this, I'm painting her red."

"Yeah, that won't attract attention at all," Brendon said, a little breathless; then he sent them spinning straight down, close enough that the ship jolted as a missile clipped its side, in a nosedive for the ocean before Brendon pulled it up short and sent it into lightspeed, darting around the circumference of the planet a few times.

He turned around, raising an eyebrow at Spencer. Spencer grinned at him a little foolishly. "You're a show off," he said.

"Is that code for me saving your ass again, Smith?" Brendon asked airily, and Spencer laughed.

"Come on, Pete," he said. "Tell us where these guys are and we'll pick them up. Passcode is three-zero-zero-eight."

"Looks like they're hiding out in the Dimican Mountains," Pete said, eyes slightly distant. "I'm sending the coordinates to the ship trajectory course now, Brendon—"

"Yeah, we've changed direction," Brendon said, sitting back and letting the auto-drive take over. "Estimated time of arrival – two minutes thirty."

"Are their rooms ready, Pete?" Spencer said.

"Yup," Pete said. "Two guys, adjoining bathrooms, I left a little mint chocolate on the pillow – I'm wasted on you two, honestly, you don't appreciate my creativity."

"We'll make sure the ambassadors say thanks," Spencer said, and went to pull on his jacket. Brendon laughed at him and Spencer glared – Brendon was an asshole, Spencer's jacket was _awesome_. It had gold buttons, and was meant to be used especially for special occasions. Besides, Union reps were almost inevitably arrogant and pretentious, and Spencer wasn't going to wear the same shabby button-up shirt he'd been wearing for weeks.

"All set?" Brendon said.

"A month from here back to Mettis and the Headquarters," Spencer said glumly. "I really hope they're not _too_ awful."

"We can always lock them in their rooms," Brendon said. He stood up, coming over to walk with Spencer through the bridge and down to the landing dock, slinging an easy arm around Spencer's shoulders. "It'll be fine, wait and see. It'll be over before you know it, and we can get out of here and sleep for a week."

Spencer nodded. "Page their comm device and tell them to be ready, Pete," he said.

"Already done," Pete said over the loudspeaker, and the _Fever_ touched Delta with a careful little shudder and a pleasant hum, as if she was a well-behaved ship out of dock for the first time, rather than the cantankerous heap of shit Spencer had fixed up time and time again for years. Still, if she wanted to play pretend for a little while, Spencer was cool with that. Spencer was pretty cool with anything that didn't involve throwing him into walls.

The doors slid down, and Spencer had a split second of staring before he was busy throwing himself on top of Brendon and knocking them both to the floor, ducking his head at the hail of bullets.

"Hi, Spencer," Ryan said breathlessly, jumping in over the hatch with another guy, and then it closed, Brendon shouted a muffled command from under Spencer to Pete, and the _Fever_ lifted up again.

\---

The _Fever_ didn't feel quite the same; there was an unsteady thrum in her that made Ryan itch to go up and tinker around with the controls until he could find out what was wrong, fix the halting movement as she burst through the atmosphere and out into space. Right now, though, he was a little preoccupied with tugging Jon's jacket off and trying to act as if Spencer staring at him while sprawled on top of another guy was totally normal.

"Ryan?" Spencer said.

"Hi!" Ryan said again, and then, "sorry, sorry," when Jon hissed out a curse between his teeth.

" _Ryan_?" Spencer said, and Ryan looked up sharply.

"Jon's been shot," he said. "Have you guys got a first aid kit? We left ours on planet."

"… Brendon?" Spencer said, and the tiny guy underneath Spencer struggled up and went quickly out of the room.

Ryan peeled off Jon's shirt, clapping a hand over the gouge in his arm. Jon mumbled something low and dark under his breath again and Ryan peered at him, said, "How bad does it hurt?"

Jon blinked at him. "Seriously?"

"Alright," Ryan said, screwing up his nose. "How deep is the bullet?"

Jon drew in a shallow breath. "Hopefully not so deep," he said, which was all Ryan needed to know.

He pressed his forehead against Jon's shoulder, the unhurt one, and whispered, " _Fuck_." Jon lifted his hand to ruffle Ryan's hair lightly, and Ryan raised his head to glare at him. "How moronic can you get?" he snapped. "We were almost gone!"

"Sorry," Jon said, and Ryan tightened his hold over the skin where the bullet had torn through Jon's bicep. Jon closed his eyes and said, faintly, "You haven't introduced me properly to our Captain."

"Just for a little while," Spencer said behind them, stiff but immediate enough that Ryan realised he'd been listening the whole time. "I'm Spencer Smith. How badly hurt are you?"

"Well, he got shot," Ryan said, turning to glare at Spencer. Spencer folded his arms, eyes cold now that the shock was gone.

"So I can see," he said. "You'll forgive me if I'm not quite reduced to hysterics – there are degrees of—"

"First aid kit!" Brendon announced, skidding back into the room. Ryan held out his hand imperiously and, after a moment, Brendon handed it to him. Without looking, Ryan was aware of Spencer's glare intensifying.

He pulled out a hypodermic, checking the label quickly, and stabbed it into Jon's vein, fast enough that he didn't have time to freak out. He let out a hissed curse but then relaxed, eyes slipping to half-mast, and Ryan smiled at him. "Don't pass out on me just yet," he said. "I gotta patch you up."

"Alright," Jon said, voice slurring a little, and Ryan set to work quickly, digging the bullet out of Jon's newly desensitized skin with a pair of somewhat evil looking tweezers and producing needle and thread to sew up the wound. Jon looked away, face pale even though he couldn't feel anything, and Ryan hummed something low and comforting.

"This is gonna hurt like a bitch when you wake up," he said, and Jon grinned up at him.

"S'long as you haven't missed a place, this time," he said.

Ryan scoffed. "I think you'd have noticed if you got shot more than once, asshole," he said, biting off the end of the thread with his teeth. Jon just smiled again, eyes slipping shut, and Ryan took a fresh bandage from the kit and began to wrap it tightly around Jon's arm.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" Spencer asked, and Ryan turned reluctantly.

"I've picked up a thing or two in the past five years," he said coolly, and then, making a face, hoisted Jon to his feet, slinging Jon's arm around his shoulders. Jon staggered into him and Ryan huffed out a breath, struggling to keep him upright. "Where can I put him?" he asked.

For a moment, Spencer didn't move, stood staring at Ryan with his face white and cold and furious. Ryan stared back, while the other guy, Brendon, glanced between them with a nervous expression, and Jon dropped his head to rest against Ryan's skin, breathing too lightly for Ryan's liking, little huffs of air against his neck.

"Spencer," Ryan said, "he's hurt."

Spencer stood still for another second; then he nodded and turned smartly on his heel, leading Ryan up through the _Fever_ and into the rooms that had been living quarters the last time Ryan had seen them. Ryan deposited Jon on the bed, letting him down gently, Jon already unconscious. Ryan wavered for a moment, not entirely sure what he wanted to show Spencer – then Jon mumbled and moved over invitingly and Ryan tumbled down on the bed next to him, careful not to touch Jon's sore arm, and was asleep before Spencer and Brendon even closed the doors.

\---

Ryan woke to Jon shaking his shoulder lightly. "Hmmn?" he said, turning blindly away from Jon's hand, trying to get back to sleep, but Jon shook him a little more insistently.

"Ryan," he said. "The computer's trying to talk to you."

"Pete?" Ryan said sleepily, not opening his eyes.

"I'm delighted you remember my name," Pete said from somewhere above him, and Ryan turned his face to the side, pressing his mouth against the pillow. "Captain Smith requests your presence in the bridge. Both of you."

"M'sleeping," Ryan said. "And Jon's hurt."

"I'm alright," Jon said. "I don't know exactly what was in that hypo, but they're pretty good drugs."

"I'm _sleeping_ ," Ryan repeated.

"You've been unconscious for the past thirteen hours," Pete said, voice unreadable. "The Captain requests your presence on the bridge."

"Thirteen hours?" Ryan felt Jon sit up next to him; he tilted his head enough that he could see Jon scrub a hand through his hair. "Fuck. They're _amazing_ drugs."

Ryan groaned and sat up, tilting forward to rest his forehead against his knees. "I have not slept enough," he said. He tried, half-heartedly, to do some sums in his head: it had been four – no, five days since their hosts had turned on them and they'd had to leave the comfortable bedrooms they'd been allotted for their stay, four days on the run, and Ryan was pretty sure he'd napped for a couple of hours in a dank cave somewhere while Jon kept watch, but apart from that he couldn't remember much sleep at all. Pete was staring disapprovingly at him from the screen on the wall, but Ryan thought that was just him being a pissy little bitch, rather than any fault of Ryan's.

Jon was struggling upright, though, stiff and slow. "Easy there," Ryan said, and Jon turned to smile at him.

"Come on," he said. "Let's go."

Ryan groaned. "This is gonna suck," he said, twisting slightly to shoot a glare at Pete, who tilted his chin up stubbornly and didn't move. "Seriously, Jon, haven't I—"

"Yeah, you've told me," Jon said. "Still, we're onboard for at least a month—"

"I'm thinking we jump ship first opportunity we get," Ryan said. "We've got to stop for gas sometime – we can hitch a ride from some sort of trader ship—"

"Does the fact that we'd be happily shot by citizens of most of the planets around here mean anything to you?" Jon said, raising an eyebrow. "Seriously, the Union sent these guys to keep us safe, Gabe'll kill you if you decide that an old fight—"

"The destructive influence of prior history," Ryan muttered.

"—an old _fight_ , Ryan Ross, is enough reason for us to take off again. Gabe's only going to be able to protect us for so long, and you know that if we get into trouble again they'll revoke our licenses."

"They're morons," Ryan said, running his hands through his hair. "We're better at this than anyone."

"Yeah, that's why so many people want to shoot us," Jon said dryly, and took Ryan's elbow, tugging him up to his feet. "Come on. Let's go and get this over with, and then you can, I don't know, sulk in the rooms for the rest of the stay."

"You won't be?" Ryan turned a challenging stare on Jon, who laughed.

"Hey, they didn't do anything to me," he said, and then added quickly, when Ryan glared, "Not that I'm not totally on your side and everything, clearly Spencer's an asshole and intolerable and stuff—"

"You don't know what it was like," Ryan said, folding his arms. "Seriously, Jon, it was like all of a sudden he—"

"I've heard the story!" Jon said, hastily. "You've told me the story, Ryan, I'm on your side." He sighed, and got the slightly pinched expression that always meant Ryan was being a little more annoying than usual. "Come on. Let's just go up. He's our Captain."

"Fine," Ryan grumbled, and turned to where Pete was still watching them, blank-faced. "Computer," he said, with a slight buzz of mean pleasure, "please inform Captain Smith that we're on our way up."

Pete's mouth twisted down. "Ambassador," he said, and bowed his head slightly before he flickered off, leaving the screen black.

On the bridge, Spencer was standing above Brendon, hand resting on Brendon's chair, head bent low to talk to him. His gaze was intent and worried, and Brendon, who was sitting at the controls, looked up at him and spoke quickly and softly, smiling frequently, occasionally reaching out with an idle gesture to nudge at something on the console. Ryan tried not to bristle. It had been five years, but it was the first time he'd been back on the _Fever_ , and watching someone else drive her just felt wrong.

Jon bumped up lightly against Ryan's side. Ryan looked at him and said, voice low, "You sure your arm's okay?"

"Fine," Jon said, not bothering to be quiet, and Spencer straightened, turning to look at them.

"Hello," he said crisply. "I trust you're feeling better, Ambassador Walker?"

"It's Jon," Jon said. "And yes, thank you."

"I think it's better if we stick to certain regulations of formality," Spencer said. Ryan didn't move a muscle, but he saw Jon's smile falter out of the corner of his eye, and ignored the hot surge of anger in him. "I wanted to secure a full debriefing," Spencer continued. "It's important for our reports."

"The nature of our mission is classified," Ryan said. Spencer looked at him for the first time, mouth twisting.

"I'm aware of that," he said. "Though I don't really think an _Ambassador's_ duties are very hard to infer. I do need to know what resulted in our ship being fired upon when we landed."

Ryan blinked at him in disbelief. " _We_ were being fired upon," he said, slowly. "You happened to get in the way."

Spencer set his jaw. "If you could provide details, please," he said, and Ryan folded his arms.

"The host government turned on us approximately one week after our arrival," he said, feeling his cheeks flush with anger. "After escaping the palace, we made our way through the Delta wilderness while waiting for a rescue mission. They had just caught up to us upon your arrival, and as your purpose was pretty clear, they turned their guns on you as well."

Spencer smiled politely. "What good timing," he said, and Brendon made a small, choking sound behind him. Ryan remembered he was there for the first time and turned to look, and Brendon was clearly smothering a smile behind his hand. Ryan glared.

"If that's all," Ryan said.

"Yes," Spencer said. "Dinner will be served at nineteen hundred hours. We can arrange for it to be delivered to your rooms, if you wish it."

"That will be fine," Ryan said.

After a moment, Spencer nodded, and Ryan turned on his heel and marched out of the room, then had to wait stupidly in the doorway while Jon smiled and waved dorkily at them, untucking his hand from his pocket and saying, "Seeya," before he turned to amble out of the room. Ryan met him with a hard stare. "What?" Jon said.

"I don't think you're really committed to this best friends thing we've got going on here," Ryan informed him, and went off to sulk in his room.

\---

"Wow," Brendon said.

Spencer dropped his head into his hands. "Shut up," he mumbled, rubbing the heels of his hands against his closed eyes.

"No, really," Brendon said. "I'm impressed. I had no idea you could be that much of an asshole."

"Oh, yeah," Spencer said, raising his head to glare. "Because in a Grand High Contest of Who's The Biggest Douche, I can certainly trump Ryan fucking Ross—"

"I'm not talking about him," Brendon said. "Your troubled past is fascinating and all, but I was talking about Jon."

Something twisted low in Spencer's stomach. Spencer told himself he was hungry, and it was not, not, _not_ guilt. "Jonathan Walker," he said, carefully, "is a passenger on my ship, and it's important that the distance between Captain and guest is maintained—"

"Bla, bla, bla," Brendon said. "You're an asshole, and you can't even pretend this isn't about jealousy."

"I'm not!" Spencer snapped. "I don't _want_ to be friends with Ryan, he's an asshole—"

"Yeah, we've established that," Brendon said. "But you're still being rude to Jon just because he _does_ want to, and I think that's more unprofessional than calling someone by their first name."

Spencer looked down, forcibly stopped himself from curling his arms around his stomach. "Did you hear what Pete said? They were talking and – Ryan told him everything."

"Yeah," Brendon said, and there was some quiet kind of hurt in his dark eyes that made Spencer's chest ache.

"It's stupid," he said quietly, "but I just. Didn't think it was something we were going to tell people. That's all, Brendon."

"Sure," Brendon said, smiling. "I don't know what I'd do if the big mystery was unveiled, anyway, I wouldn't have anything to speculate about."

"You know most of it," Spencer said, twisting his hands together.

"Childhood friends, big fight, Ryan's an asshole," Brendon agreed, nodding. "I can't think what else there is to it, really."

"I'm sorry," Spencer said, and Brendon shook his head, moved up a little on the seat so that Spencer could squish in beside them, the big chair only just fitting both of them. Brendon sighed and rested his head back against Spencer's shoulder and Spencer said, "I'll tell you now, if you want. But it's really not huge."

"I'd like that," Brendon said, and then, "hang on, let me just put her on auto-drive properly." He leaned forward, flicking switches and typing in codes with quick, easy competence, and Spencer thought about the hard look in Ryan's eyes and felt stupidly smug; thought about how good Ryan was at driving the _Fever_ , how he had worked and worked at her, poured everything of himself into being able to handle her until she was made his from sweat and blood, and about how Brendon was a hundred times better, how it came instinctively to him, how the _Fever_ responded to the touch of his fingers like nothing else, like the whole universe wanted to do as Brendon asked.

Brendon settled back in the chair again, hooking his legs over Spencer's so that they fit more comfortably, and said, decisively, "Storytime!"

"Do I need to put on a special hat?" Spencer asked, and Brendon laughed. Spencer leaned back, tilting his head up to the ceiling, and said, "So, when my dad was Senator, Ryan and his dad were two of the civil service slaves who had to do the – the paperwork and things in City Hall, you know."

"Ryan was a _slave_?" Brendon said, eyes wide. "Jesus, Smith, I thought I knew the important stuff."

"That was – I really thought he wouldn't want me to tell people," Spencer said quietly. "But I guess now that Jon knows the whole story—"

" _Maybe_ he does," Brendon interjected, and Spencer forced himself to nod, even though he didn't think there was any maybe about it, really.

"Ryan was lucky, compared to some," Spencer said. He tapped his fingers idly against the base of Brendon's spine, and Brendon shot him a small smile. "We grew up together, and my dad was really pro-abolition, so it was never about status for him and me. But Ryan's – he reads so much, or he did, and he was always educated and intelligent and allowed to be so, but it made him feel the restrictions on freedom more keenly, I think. He wasn't ever allowed to possess money, or – he didn't have a surname until abolition passed on Lucan, when we were still teenagers. He always talked about it more as a – a spiritual thing. Like that was where it hurt."

Brendon nodded. "Keep going," he said quietly, and Spencer drew in a breath and hurried on.

"Anyway," he said, "we used to – sneak out all the time, and steal shuttles and go for joyrides in space, and when the Union started looking for revolutionary ships, we just. Took off. My parents were so mad."

Brendon grinned. "That's so fucking romantic," he said, and then, when Spencer glared, "sorry, right, not romantic at all, keep talking!"

"You know most of the rest," Spencer said. "We worked for the Union, managed to build up a pretty awesome reputation, fuck if I know why, and then, um, five years ago, Ryan decided he'd had enough of flying the _Fever_ , and that we should do something – and I quote – 'meaningful'. Because the missions we're doing – you-and-me we, I mean – aren't glamorous enough for him or something, I don't even know. Anyway, I wanted to stay on the _Fever_ , he wanted to go be an Ambassador, he got pissed when I wouldn't come with him, and six months later he was gone and you stowed away. So."

"I didn't stow away," Brendon said with dignity. "I made an unplanned visit."

"Without my knowledge," Spencer said, grinning. "You're so lucky Pete likes you."

"And that my charm even got around you," Brendon told him, eyes bright. "Man, no wonder you were such an asshole."

"Yeah, well," Spencer said, looking away. "I wasn't really looking for more crew."

"It's a wonder you kept her in the air on your own," Brendon said for the umpteenth time, shaking his head. " _You're_ so lucky you've got me."

"Yeah," Spencer said. "I am," and Brendon looked at him for a moment before he laughed awkwardly and looked away. "Hey," Spencer said, tapping him on the elbow. "I am sorry. I won't hide shit from you anymore."

"Good," Brendon said. "Now get off and let me drive."

Spencer eased himself up from under Brendon, but stayed perched on the arm of the chair. "You gonna get some sleep?" he asked.

"In a little while," Brendon said, eyes trained out the window on a meteor that was hurtling by. "You go, first."

"I can wait up," Spencer said. "If this is auto-pilot zone, you should go rest."

"It'll be auto-pilot zone for a while," Brendon said, without looking away, "and you haven't slept in about twenty-four hours. Nice try, though."

"Fuck you," Spencer grumbled, and went to bed.

\---

When he woke up, four hours had passed and he stumbled out of bed, blindly reaching for the coffee that was waiting in the slot in the wall before he started working out the list of things to do. He had to go and send Brendon to get some sleep, and then contact Gabe so as to give him a fuller report than "mission successful" and also so he could yell at him for a while, and then he would go down to Jon's rooms and tell him the basic safety procedures. With any luck, Ryan would be in his own room. With Spencer's luck, Jon and Ryan would be having sex very loudly and very nakedly when he opened the door or something. Or there would be bullets and the possibility of getting shot. Spencer's luck wasn't exactly his favourite thing about his life.

He scowled at himself in the mirror, shouted for Pete to no avail – the next ship he got was going to be one whose computer _didn't_ have a personality, for fuck's sake – and eventually scrubbed his hand through his unruly hair before heading for the stairs. On the way, he made a vague list of things that he could possibly bitch about to Brendon before Brendon got sick of it – Ryan's stupid presence wouldn't work, Brendon had started looking a little pinched after about four hours of complaining about that earlier, but Spencer thought he might get away with the fact that the attack on Delta had clearly dented the _Fever's_ side, and they were lagging a little in space. That could be blamed on Ryan, Spencer thought with satisfaction, and jogged up the stairs making up a long rant in his head in preparation.

The sound of laughter made him stop in his tracks. Something cold curled in his gut and he headed down the final passageway slowly, stopping in the doorway in horror. Jon Walker had _infiltrated his bridge_. Jon Walker had infiltrated his bridge and _compromised his pilot_ , by perching easily on the cool steel beside the console and telling a story that involved a lot of waving his hands around and also a lot of Brendon laughing stupidly and compulsively, wheezing in his chair.

Spencer added a new item to his list of things to complain about, with several sub points underneath it. He thought maybe he would write it down, and deliver copies to everyone onboard, and then paste a whole bunch on the walls. Maybe he could get Pete to use it as his screensaver.

"Oh, hey, Spencer!" Jon said, looking up and beaming at him. Spencer resisted the urge to throw a punch. "I was just telling Brendon about—"

"How fascinating," Spencer said icily. "As you are apparently unaware, there are certain regulations on this ship about the presence of passengers on the bridge. Specifically, that such presence is not permitted."

" _Spencer_ ," Brendon said.

Jon stood up, smile fading. He said, "Sorry, you're right, I shouldn't—"

"Sit down," Brendon said. "I'm introducing a new ship regulation, whereupon Spencer's proper title is now Captain Asshole."

Spencer glared and folded his arms; Jon looked uncertain, hovering in his standing position. He said, slowly, "I really don't want to be in the way—"

"You're not in the way," Brendon said sharply. "Sit down."

Jon looked at Spencer. Spencer didn't move for a moment, and then he bit the inside of his cheek, hard, and made a disgruntled flappy gesture with his hand. Jon sat down again, and Spencer turned to Brendon and said, "I've come to relieve you, anyway."

"Bedtime for me," Brendon agreed, stretching back in his chair and cracking his knuckles over his head. "Nice timing, too, my eyes are just going blurry."

"You able to see well enough to get us a course?" Spencer asked, and Jon made a gentle, huffing sound of laughter, as if he wasn't quite sure whether he was allowed to. Something small and sad twisted in Spencer's chest.

"Yeah, yeah," Brendon was saying, typing in a course and coordinates and frowning at the screen. "I've just – there's rumours that Triton might be a bit of a hot spot, I kind of want to avoid it right now."

Spencer tried not to groan out loud. "Not going via Triton is going to put an extra two days on our journey."

"Going via Triton is liable to get us blown up," Brendon said cheerfully, "and terrifying as your bad moods are, I do want to live."

Jon looked awkward. "Maybe it would be better if we – if I just stayed out of the way," he began.

Brendon looked up at him, eyes wide and hurt with that fucking look that Spencer just _knew_ Brendon perfected in front of the mirror every day. He'd walked in on it once. Brendon hadn't even had the grace to look embarrassed. "But how am I gonna hear the rest of what happened on the Luan Plains, then?" he asked. "Also you said you'd come and help me with the engine."

Spencer stared. "You're a mechanic?"

"Didn't I tell you?" Brendon said smugly, and Jon shrugged.

"My brothers were," he said. "I can do bits and pieces."

Motherfucking Jon Walker. Spencer stared at him without speaking, while out of the corner of his eye he could see Brendon's grin growing as Brendon lounged back in his chair and said, "Anyway. You can't do that if you're busy hiding out from Captain Asshole."

Jon started to smile, slowly. "I did promise," he told Spencer.

"Fine," Spencer said. "Whatever. I don't care. Just – _you_ go to bed." He pointed at Brendon and then added, "And I have to check in with Commander Saporta now, anyway, so I'd appreciate the room."

"Sure," Jon said, and Brendon hopped to his feet. "Say hi to Gabe for me."

"And me," Brendon said, and linked his arm through Jon's, dragging him out of the room. He turned his head on the way out to flutter his eyelashes ridiculously at Spencer, laughing when Spencer made a rude gesture.

Spencer sighed, spinning the chair back round and tapping in the code to call up Pete. For a few minutes there was nothing, until Pete finally appeared, hair fashionably dishevelled. "Can't you mess about with your appearance coding when I don't need you?" Spencer asked.

"Someone's grumpy," Pete said, but he moved quickly when Spencer told him to patch in a call to Gabe, which meant that he was probably more than a little upset himself, and not in the mood to hang around and talk.

Gabe answered promptly, his image flickering to life on the screen, which made Spencer think that he had been waiting for the communication despite his easy smile. "Captain Smith!" Gabe said. "And how is my favourite little revolutionary vessel today?"

"A little more awkward than expected," Spencer said, folding his arms. "Gabe, what the _fuck_?"

"Now, Spencer," Gabe said, grinning madly. "No need to get cross—"

"You sent me off to get Ryan motherfucking Ross!" Spencer yelled. "I'm not _cross_ , I'm fucking furious, you fucking asshole motherfucker!"

"Right, well," Gabe said. "Let it all out, Spence, don't hold back."

"I will punch you in the face," Spencer said.

Gabe rolled his eyes. "I'd like to see you try. I'm your respected and beloved Commander, besides."

"You're an utter douche," Spencer said through gritted teeth. "What the fuck, Gabe?"

Gabe shrugged. He was still smiling, but his eyes were dark and serious, trained on Spencer. "Didn't have a choice," he said. "They were in trouble. You and Brendon are the best. We can't let Ryan and Jon die. Would you _want_ me to?"

Spencer wasn't answering that question. "I would have appreciated some notice," he said tightly. "That stuff about not being able to release their names until after we picked them up – you made that up, didn't you?"

"No, that was real," Gabe said, then admitted, "We could have got around it, if we wanted. Red tape stuff. But then you'd have been wasting both of our time before you saved their lives, and that might have made the saving part a bit difficult."

Spencer stared at him. "You're still an asshole," he said.

"Yeah, yeah," Gabe said. "Enough, we're already being bombarded by a series of really bitchy one-liners from Ross. Bill turned his comm device off, and that happens like, once a year? Give me the news."

"Not much, really," Spencer said, but gave him a brief rundown of the events, calling up the digital images the _Fever_ had taken automatically of the now-enemy ships and forwarding them through. Only a couple of them, he was pleased to note, were blurry, and he reminded himself to tell Brendon later, so that they could work out which bits of the ship were damaged and which weren't.

"Okay," Gabe said, when they were done. "That's all I need. Thanks, Spence. And listen – don't kill him. We need him alive."

Spencer glared, and shut off the connection without responding. He spun around in circles in the chair idly for a few moments, trying not to think very much. It didn't work, and he felt sick and frightened and upset. After a little while, he looked up at the doorway, hoping uselessly for company, as if Brendon might appear, or even Jon Walker, but the doorway was empty and it stayed empty.

\---

Ryan had replied to every single message that he owed, which he thought was pretty impressive considering just how vast that backlog was, and sent a series of whiny video messages to Alex and Z's comms. He'd written half a notebook of prose before he realised it was infused with the same kind of angst he used to write the _last_ time he'd been onboard the _Fever_ , and had to throw it across the room in horror, and slept more than he had in weeks. He'd also taken three showers and folded all of the plain, uniform clothes that had been provided for them. They were already folded, but Ryan felt he could do it with more flair.

"Ryan," Jon said from the doorway, "why don't you come out of your room?" Ryan shot him an unimpressed look. Jon sighed and said, "You're probably starting to smell."

"I've showered three times," Ryan said haughtily.

"Yeah, okay," Jon said. "So you're just starting to go crazy then, what gives."

"I'm not going out there," Ryan said, with the cold, stilted air that an Ambassador of the Union should cultivate.

"Don't use the Bitch Voice," Jon said, rolling his eyes. Ryan folded his arms, and Jon cocked his head to the side. "Hey," Jon said. "Spencer's not even out there right now. Just come and hang out with me and Bden."

" _Bden_?" Ryan repeated, raising his eyebrows.

Jon looked faintly embarrassed, but kept talking despite that. "He's pretty cool, you know," he said. "He's a fucking amazing pilot, and apparently he plays music back on-planet, too, he likes a whole bunch of the same stuff you do. You'd like him, Ryan, you should just—"

"I'm not hanging out with Brendon Urie," Ryan said.

Jon grinned. "You somehow know his last name."

"I heard Pete use it," Ryan said, which was true. Of course, by that time he'd already spent several hours searching on his comm for combinations of _Brendon_ and _Fever_ and _Spencer Smith_ , enough to find out Brendon's surname all on his own. It hadn't been a great use of his time, really – there was pretty much _nothing_ on Brendon out there, it was bizarre – but it was _a_ use of his time, and that was all Ryan needed. A whole month until they were on Mettis, and Ryan planned to hone his time-wasting skills to their sharpest point. He was pretty good at it already.

"He's a nice guy, Ryan," Jon said.

"I'm sure he is," Ryan said, instead of _I hate him I hate him I hate him_. "I'm still not hanging out with him."

Then he smiled neatly at Jon and closed the door fast enough that Jon had to jolt backwards or get his nose cut off.

\---

Ryan went back to sleep. He slept for hours, with strange, vivid dreams that left him restless and uncomfortable, tossing and turning on the soft mattress in search for some untouchable comfort. He woke up abruptly when the ship lurched and threw him on the ground, and Ryan sat bolt upright with a gasp.

The _Fever_ was staggering and shaking, and Ryan was on his feet before he had any clear idea what he was doing. The ship was mostly black, only the most minimal lighting on, which made Ryan think that Spencer still declared the obligatory 'night time' once in a while. He used to do it when Ryan wasn't sleeping enough, sending _all_ of them to bed with the ship running on auto-pilot; Ryan didn't know why he'd thought that would have stopped when he left. Maybe it was because it was strange to imagine the ship itself going on without him, and he'd long since gotten very good at skipping past a news bulletin the moment _Captain Smith_ or _the Fever_ caught his eye.

Now, he stumbled down the dark passageway, smoothing his hand over the _Fever_ 'scool side, half-asleep still. The walls felt slightly warm under his touch, which wasn't a good sign. "Hang in there," he mumbled, and stubbed his toe on the first step leading up to the bridge.

The bridge was empty, and Ryan crossed the floor quickly and sank into his old chair without thinking twice. The console had been updated, once or twice, and Ryan took a second to stare at it before he got his bearings, adding up what he knew of the _Fever_ and the ships he'd flown since then, working out what needed to be done. He didn't want to risk a reboot; that would stop them midspace, and show up on the records, and Ryan didn't want to be accused of playing with the system.

He typed in the code for a system review, instead. It hadn't changed, and Ryan breathed out in relief. When he looked up, Pete was on the screen, watching him stony-faced, but Ryan didn't say anything and neither did Pete.

Ryan rubbed his eyes, willing himself to focus. He didn't even know what he was doing, really – he was still half-asleep, but that was more awake than everyone else, apparently, and in the strange state of consciousness he was caught in, there didn't seem anything to do _but_ get the _Fever_ on her feet again, the way he had years and years ago.

The problem was in her engines, the transitory circuit, Ryan realised, running his eyes over the code. That couldn't be fixed any way but manually, and they'd probably need a new circuit, but Ryan resolved to get Jon to look at it when he woke up and see what he could do. (It was in their interest. Ryan didn't want the ship to crash while he was on it.)

"You have to reboot," someone said behind him, voice rough and low with sleep. Ryan swivelled around; it was Brendon, stumbling into the room in his boxers, with his hair sticking up everywhere, rubbing at his eyes with his fists.

"I'm sorry," Ryan said, carefully. "I didn't mean to intrude—"

"Reboot it," Brendon repeated, yawning, and Ryan typed in the code. The ship shuddered and sent his chair rolling back against the floor as it stopped, but it didn't fix the unsteady passage through space. Behind him, Brendon groaned again. "Fuck, it's going to take a couple of tries," he said.

"You can't risk that if you're in the air," Ryan said. "If someone's in pursuit—"

"I _know_ that," Brendon said, stretching his arms up in the air, closing his eyes. Ryan snatched his gaze away from Brendon's stomach anyway, the way Brendon's boxers slipped lower on his hips, the dark trail of hair leading down. "So far we've just been lucky, but there's not much funding for us anymore—"

"Why not?" Ryan asked.

Brendon shrugged. "Technically the revolutionary vessels aren't needed anymore. The Union's here, you know, we won it for them, so now we're appreciated, but obsolete. It's not true, of course, the Union's a shitload of things before it's _united_ , but in the eyes of the intergalactic government, we're just diehards who don't know when to let go."

"Fuck," Ryan said, low, thinking of the hospitality he and Jon were greeted with everywhere (regardless of whether an attempt would be made on their lives later), the rich beds and luxury spaceships. Brendon shrugged, the ship jolted again, and Ryan spun back to the console, squinting at the glowing code and trying not to pound at it with his fist, which was his old method of dealing with the _Fever_ when he was frustrated by her.

"Try the reboot again," Brendon said, but Ryan tilted his head to the side.

"Hey," he said. "What if we did something with a system overload – overrode the warning codes on the transitory circuit—"

"You mean make her _think_ she's got a new one?" Brendon said. He came closer, looking more alert now. Ryan swallowed, and then frowned; there were fine white lines cutting across Brendon's back, scars patterning all the way up and down. Then Brendon shifted again in the shadows, turning slightly towards Ryan, and he couldn't see them anymore.

"It could make her overheat," Ryan said.

"Or it could make her run smoothly for a month at least," Brendon said. "Do it."

Ryan typed in the code, frowning. He caught his bottom lip between his teeth and pinched just hard enough for it to hurt, and then the _Fever_ made a pleasant humming sound and settled down. Ryan swivelled around, and Brendon _beamed_ at him, clearly delighted.

"That was awesome," he said. "Good thinking, dude, I would never have come up with that."

Ryan ran his hands through his hair awkwardly, not meeting Brendon's gaze. "Sorry for coming up here," he said. "I woke up and – forgot—"

"Hey, you fixed her," Brendon said. "I'm not going to be pissed, come on. It's not like a ship is only ever meant to have one pilot."

Ryan said, voice low, "Spencer wouldn't want me here."

"Spencer doesn't know," Brendon said, offering Ryan a smile. "Besides, Spencer's pretty partial to his ship running properly, you know. I don't think he'd be mad."

"Spencer's been mad at me for years," Ryan said. "He's so fucking stubborn, I don't think he'd even know how to stop." Brendon didn't say anything, just watched him, and Ryan shrugged, and stood up. "I should go back to my rooms," he said.

"You could sit up a while, if you liked," Brendon said. "I'm not going back to sleep, and I think we haven't used up all of the sweeter storage foods, if you want some."

"Thank you, no," Ryan said, and scurried away, too conscious of Brendon's dark gaze watching him leave.

\---

When Spencer next emerged, the bridge was suspiciously empty. He stood there for a moment anyway, half-expecting Brendon to magically appear at the console, but nothing happened, and after a moment he turned and went to Brendon's rooms, even though he'd heard Brendon get up an hour or so ago, knew that he wouldn't be there.

Something thick and strange crawled in his throat, in his gut. He thought again about Brendon retelling some of Jon's stories, Brendon perching on the edge of the controls so that Jon could have his chair while he talked. Spencer jogged down the steps to Jon's rooms, anger clutching at him, and hammered hard on Jon's door. It was closed and locked, but the light above it was flashing that the room was occupied.

"Brendon!" he yelled.

The door slid open neatly, and Spencer blinked, taking a step back. Ryan was standing in his boxers, arms folded over his thin chest, jaw clenched. "I'm _Ryan_ ," he said. "Did you forget?"

"I – what?" Spencer said, a little stupidly. Then something occurred to him and his eyes widened. "Are you and Jon—"

"What? No!" Ryan snapped. "Not that it's any of your business!"

Spencer stared at him. "Then why are you all—" He waved his hand a little helplessly, indicating Ryan's general state of undress, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Ryan's face. "—in his _rooms_?"

"Jon's my best friend," Ryan said coldly. "But these are my rooms." Spencer blinked, and then turned slightly – and Ryan was right, after all, Jon's room was next door, the doors closed and the light blinking unoccupied. He turned back to Ryan, and Ryan frowned at him. "Why are you looking for Brendon in Jon's rooms anyway?" he asked.

"He's not anywhere else," Spencer said.

Ryan looked mildly concerned. "Jon said he and Brendon were going down to the engine room," he said. "I – are they not there? Are they – is Jon alright? You haven't stopped anywhere or—"

"I didn't check the engine room," Spencer said, ignoring Ryan's incredulous stare. He turned on his heel and said, "Sorry for interrupting you."

He went quickly down the passage and the stairs, listening to the quiet hum of Ryan's door closing again behind him, speeding up after that and racing down the stairs to the engine room, taking the twisting turns to the core of the ship, pulling off his jacket on the way – it was always unbearably hot in there. When he reached the room, he paused in the doorway, seeing Jon and Brendon laughing about something behind the curling bronze pipes. Brendon had taken his shirt off, and Jon had oil stains on his face and hands, resting his uninjured arm lightly on Brendon's shoulder to lean on him. They were turned into each other, faces bright and warm and open.

Spencer thought something strange and disconnected about how to be a good person, how the right thing to do right now would be turn around and let Brendon and Jon get on with whatever they were doing on their own. Brendon looked happy, and Spencer didn't see Brendon look very happy with other people that often. Sometimes Spencer thought Brendon was waiting for everyone to tell him another impossible truth, or that he made it easier for people to push him away first on purpose so that he knew he'd done it himself, done it his way. Brendon didn't really seem like he was doing either with Jon, though, and he didn't even seem self-conscious about his back, the engine room dim but still well-lit enough to show up the scars.

Spencer didn't walk away, though. He took a few steps inside and said, "Brendon?" and Brendon looked up and smiled at him, different to the way he smiled at Jon, but real enough to make Spencer relax a little.

"Hey!" Brendon said. "We're just trying to do something about the heatcore, it's gone all stuttery on us."

"Stuttery?" Spencer repeated, raising an eyebrow, and Brendon flapped a hand in his direction.

"The beat's off, whatever, you know what I mean," he said. "Jon thinks—"

"—it's the wires around it," Jon said, grinning at Spencer. "They're melting, see, because the heatcore's bad, and the way they're fusing means that the heatcore's going to _stay_ bad, it's like a Catch 22 thing."

"Thank God we've got a literary reference we can make, then," Spencer said. "That'll stop the ship from falling out of the sky."

" _Spencer_ ," Brendon said, but Jon seemed unperturbed.

"No, it's fixable," he said. "See, we just isolate the wires like this – and we can keep them separate with some of the new neo-plastic slides, you get them a dime a dozen at any marketplace, and it's a cinch." He pulled a handful of filmy little squares out of his pocket and held them up in explanation, and Spencer nodded.

"Sounds good," he said, and then, when Brendon shot him a look, "Thank you."

"Happy to help," Jon said, smiling at him, eyes warm and gone a little crinkly around the edges.

"So Jon's repairing our engine," Brendon told Spencer, something wicked lingering in the corner of his smile, "and Ryan fixed up the transitory-booster circuit crap while you were sleeping – ambassadors totally aren't as useless as they used to be, Spence, don't you think?"

Spencer was sort of frozen on the other part. "Ryan did what?" he said.

"The transitory circuit," Brendon said, and launched into an explanation about overriding codes and the possibility of a placebo cure which stopped the ship from allowing knowledge of a malfunctioning circuit to fuck it up, and a whole bunch of technical and theoretical examples that Spencer didn't really pay much attention to.

"Ryan did it," he said, slowly. Jon was watching him, face unreadable, but Spencer couldn't bring himself to care.

"I got up and he was on the bridge," Brendon said, and shrugged.

"Maybe he was—"

"He's not going to sabotage a ship he's _flying_ on, Spencer, what the fuck," Brendon said, frowning a little. "Anyway, he was alright – kind of stilted, but—"

"Ryan's always like that," Jon put in carefully, and then smiled and added, "The first time we were assigned on a diplomatic mission together, he totally ignored me for the first month, and then turned up in my room after he had a nightmare one night, he's kind of ridiculous."

 _Jon's my best friend_ , Ryan said in Spencer's head, and Spencer knew Ryan's tendency to come crawling into bed with someone in the middle of the night, but that felt strange to hear anyway. He drew in a breath and said, "Thank you for fixing the core, Jon."

"You're welcome," Jon said.

"Spencer," Brendon said.

"I'm going to go read those reports Gabe needs me to check," Spencer said. Then he went and walked down the passage and around the corner until he found a little nook of shadows he could lean in, and clutched at his own elbows, and shook.

Brendon appeared about five minutes later, taking a look at Spencer and making an unhappy face before he pulled Spencer into a hug, curving his head over Spencer's shoulder, hanging on tight. He was sweaty, skin hot from the engine room, and Spencer clutched at him and breathed him in, giving up any hope of appearing like he was in control of anything. Brendon had always tended to see through that kind of thing anyway.

"Sorry," Spencer said. "Sorry, I'm sorry, I don't want to be an asshole—"

"It's alright," Brendon said, voice low and soothing. "It's fine. It's okay."

"It's just," Spencer said, and swallowed hard, trying to come up with the words. "I mean, he's a dick and he took off for the stupidest fucking reasons and I don't know him anymore and I don't want to know him, but."

"I know," Brendon said. "Hey, Spence, I know."

"He was my best friend," Spencer said, and Brendon curled closer around him and hummed, stroking an easy hand over Spencer's hair.

"Yes," Brendon said, after a while, and neither of them moved.

\---

"The thing is," Brendon said, offering Spencer a foil package of the Vegetable-Protein and shrugging when Spencer shook his head, "I like Jon. I know we're anti-Jon in theory, but he's pretty cool, and he's helping a bunch with the _Fever_ , and I'm going to keep hanging out with him."

Spencer swallowed his mouthful of substitute rice and considered for a moment. "Okay," he said, not quite sure what Brendon _wanted_ him to respond with.

"Alright," Brendon said, "but the other thing is that you're a little bit crazy at the best of times, dude, and I don't think hanging out alone in your rooms or with Pete until we get to Mettis is the best plan."

"I'm not sure if that's your call to make," Spencer said, rather than _shut the fuck up, my plan is awesome_.

"Oh, okay," Brendon said, and rolled his eyes. "Sure, you're right, me hanging out with Jon means we're not friends anymore, so you're my Captain and I'm your pilot and everything is totally acceptable as long as you put on that funny voice."

"It's not a funny voice," Spencer said, injured.

"I have no idea where you picked it up," Brendon said through a mouthful of food, widening his eyes. "It's like you watched a whole bunch of Occupational Space Safety videos when you were a kid and have decided that the narrator was your hero."

"You're an asshole," Spencer said, and Brendon laughed.

"The _other_ thing," he said, "is that I can kind of see why you and Ryan were friends, because you apparently share a brain in the whole Plan Department, and he hasn't come out of his room much at all. I don't really think you need to avoid Jon in order to avoid him."

"I have my own brain," Ryan said, and Spencer jumped, whirling around on his chair despite himself. Ryan looked at him blankly and came slowly into the room.

"Um," Brendon said. "Hi, Ryan."

"Can we help you?" Spencer said, coldly.

"I'm hungry," Ryan said, walking past him to the cupboards. He was dressed this time, Spencer was glad to note, though it was one of the more strange outfits he'd seen Ryan put on. He was pretty sure the striped pants clashed with the spirally paisley vest, but he wasn't going to comment.

"We can arrange for meals to be brought to your rooms whenever you're hungry," he said instead. "You only need to ask Pete."

"I wasn't aware I was under arrest," Ryan said, turning to face him. Brendon winced.

"I'm sorry," Spencer said. "I had no idea you had that much interest in exploring the _Fever_. The past has suggested that you don't have much interest in her at all."

Ryan looked straight at him. "Right," he said. "I don't. Imagine how much worseit is to be cooped up in only one of her goddamn rooms."

"Hey," Brendon said, quietly. Ryan ignored him, turning back to the cupboards and pulling out some Toast-Powder, shaking it into one of the moulds and putting it in the tiny oven without turning around or fumbling with anything. Spencer thought something stupid and vicious about how he should have changed the places around where he kept things, made it so Ryan had to _ask_.

"Anyway," Ryan said, "I'm not planning to hang around with you, so you needn't worry." He looked over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows, said, "You're welcome to go a little crazy without me."

"Fuck you," Spencer said, standing up, and Brendon's mouth twisted down, unhappily.

"You don't – I was kidding," Brendon said. "When I said that, I was kidding."

"Sure," Ryan said. "Spencer's not the crazy type, really. Anal-retentive, maybe, small-minded and bitchy and a control freak, that'd be closer. Crazy is too close to creative, and Spencer's stuck in his little rut for all time. Right, Spence?" He grinned, and Spencer walked around the table and punched him in the face.

Ryan crumpled easily to the ground, sprawling backwards on the floor and cupping his hands over his mouth, staring up at Spencer wide-eyed over his fingers. "Jesus," Brendon said, and scrambled up out of his seat. For a moment he hesitated behind Spencer, who was still standing over Ryan, fists clenched, shaking, eyes locked with Ryan's, and then Brendon whirled around and grabbed a clean cloth from a drawer, banging on one of the steel contraptions bolted into the wall until it let out a rattle of ice cubes. He bundled them up in the cloth and came and knelt down beside Ryan.

"Here," Brendon said, and Ryan didn't move, didn't look away from Spencer. Out of the corner of his eye, Spencer watched as Brendon shook his head and made an impatient sound, grabbing Ryan's elbow and shaking it until Ryan looked at him. "Your lip's bleeding," Brendon said. "It's gonna swell, here," and Ryan took the cloth from him and pressed it to his mouth, drawing his knees up to his chest.

Spencer took a step backward, some half-formed thought about running for his life in his head, but Ryan looked up at him sharply and didn't say anything, and Spencer froze in place again. Ryan's face was unreadable, his eyes huge and startled, lashes dark against his pale skin, long fingers clutching the ice to his mouth, and Brendon was still kneeling next to him, glancing up at Spencer with a worried expression.

"Hey, Spence, is – what's going on?" Spencer turned slightly, unwillingly, to where Jon had appeared in the doorway, taking in Ryan and Brendon on the floor and Spencer standing above them, looking confused.

"Spencer punched me," Ryan said, voice low and completely empty of any accusation. He tilted his head to the side, staring up at Spencer like he was waiting for something, like he wasn't sure that was what had happened, like he needed verification.

Jon said, "What?" and came further into the room.

"I'm – sorry," Spencer said, the words sounding strange to his own ears. "That was unprofessional."

Ryan pulled himself to his feet. "I'll eat in my room," he said, but he left without taking his toast, waving a hand at Jon asking if he needed a hand, slipping out of sight and around the corner. Spencer let out a breath, and Brendon eased himself to his feet.

"Fuck," Spencer said, and Jon echoed him, face unhappy.

"Spencer, I – maybe we should try and transfer to another ship," Jon said. "Can't you get in contact with Gabe? We've been flying a week, there must be some other Union ships in orbit."

"I can handle it," Spencer said, offering Brendon an apologetic look. Brendon shrugged. "I'm sorry, I just – I lost my temper."

"With all due respect," Jon said, and smiled slightly, "I'm not particularly worried about you." He sighed and shoved his hands through his hair. "I'm going to go find Ryan."

When he left, Brendon turned to Spencer, eyes wide. "What do we do now?" he asked.

"I have no idea," Spencer said.

\---

"You're allowed to be upset, you know," Jon said.

"Stay still," Ryan told him, unwrapping the bandage carefully. Jon winced, and Ryan said, "Hurting?"

"Just kind of sore," Jon said. "Like – a really bad bruise."

"We've gotta ask Gabe what kind of drugs he decks his ships out with," Ryan said, not shifting his gaze from Jon's arm. He touched the black, ungainly stitches tentatively and said, "I think it's healing okay."

"Cool," Jon said, and Ryan reached out for fresh bandaging, wrapping it tight around Jon's bicep. Jon sucked in a sharp breath, and Ryan looked at him properly.

"You want another painkiller?" he asked.

Jon shook his head. "I'll take one before I sleep," he said. "Don't want to get dependent."

Ryan smiled. "I don't think you're a junkie just yet," he said.

"You could have one," Jon said, voice quiet. "For your mouth," and Ryan bent his head, finished tying up Jon's arm.

"I don't think a punch is quite as bad as being shot," he said finally, handing Jon his shirt.

Jon shrugged it on, careful with his bad arm. "I don't mean the _same_ painkillers," he said. "I mean, you could get some aspirin or something. I could ask, if you wanted."

"I'm fine," Ryan said. His lip had been throbbing all day, actually, and it was all he could do not to keep touching it, pressing and prodding and testing, remembering the rage on Spencer's face, all of it directed at him, Ryan taking up every inch of Spencer's focus. He hadn't looked away, afterward. Ryan tried biting his lip, considered the sharp spike of pain that followed. "I'm good," he said.

Jon rubbed his face with his hands. "I talked to Spencer about maybe getting us transferred to another ship," he said. "I don't know. Maybe that's the best thing we can do right now."

"I thought you liked them," Ryan said.

Jon hesitated, watching him carefully. "I like Brendon a lot," he said. "He's good fun. Spencer seems alright, if a little uptight."

"That's what I thought," Ryan said. "We don't have to leave, I'm fine."

"I like Spencer a lot less now," Jon continued, "because he punched my best friend in the face, and that's not cool."

Ryan looked up at him. "It's not so bad," he said, and Jon reached out a hand and traced his thumb over Ryan's bottom lip, much softer than Ryan had tried it before. Ryan stayed very, very still, letting Jon's warm palm graze across his chin.

"I'll see about getting us another ride," Jon said, voice low, and Ryan closed his eyes and nodded. He tried not to lean forward, and a moment later Jon stood up and left.

\---

Ryan stayed in his room again for two days, certain that he didn't want to come out, that it would be a very, very bad idea. Jon came and spent time with him, but Ryan was quiet enough that Jon didn't stay long, which Ryan was grateful for, grateful for the way Jon knew him well enough to understand when Ryan needed to be left alone. When the knock on his locked door came, then, Ryan wasn't expecting anyone but Jon. He certainly wasn't expecting Spencer.

"Hi," Spencer said, looking awkward.

Ryan stared at him. "Hello," he said. "Can I help you?"

"I submitted a request for ship transfer," Spencer said. "Yesterday. Anyway, Gabe – Commander Saporta, we've got a video conference slot with him in twenty minutes. It's been requested that you and Jon attend."

"Oh," Ryan said, and turned to pick up his jacket, pull it on over his shirt and fix his hair in the mirror. Spencer waited, and after a moment Ryan turned and said, "Okay, then."

Spencer looked at him, face white and unhappy. "I wanted to say sorry," he said.

"You said sorry," Ryan said, and stepped out, the doors closing behind him. He went to walk past but Spencer touched his arm and he turned, unwillingly, folded his arms.

"I shouldn't have done that," Spencer said, eyes flicking to Ryan's mouth, and then up again, and then down.

Ryan worked to keep his voice steady. "I shouldn't have said those things," he said. "We were both angry. It's fine."

"I am angry," Spencer said quietly. "I mean. It's not past tense."

"Hey, snap," Ryan said, and pulled away from Spencer's grasp, heading up to the bridge.

Jon and Brendon were already in there. Jon was massaging his arm idly and Ryan cast a narrow look at him. The two were sitting on a ledge towards the back of the room, their hands resting between them, pinkie fingers touching, and Ryan hovered awkwardly in the doorway for a moment before Jon looked up and grinned at him, and Brendon smiled too, a little more uncertain but waving him in anyway. Ryan didn't smile, and from behind him, Spencer made his way across the floor stiffly.

"Pete," Spencer said, "can you get us Gabe Saporta, please."

"Sure," Pete said. "But first, riddle me this—"

" _No_ ," Spencer said, and Pete sighed.

"You should have more fun," he said, and Ryan looked at his feet, and didn't look up until Gabe's voice came through.

"Hey, it's my favourite revolutionaries!" he said, and then, "You're still alive, JWalk. Good to see."

"I do my best," Jon told him, grinning.

"Hi, Gabe," Spencer said. "You're quicker than we expected."

Gabe blinked over the screen, looking genuinely confused. "You know what's going on?"

Spencer straightened slightly, which meant that he was worried and concentrating. Ryan looked to the side quickly, and found himself meeting Brendon's eyes, the smile falling off Brendon's face. Brendon looked at him seriously, and Ryan ducked his head, hair falling over his eyes.

"Are you responding to the request for a ship transfer for the Ambassadors?" Spencer said, enunciating carefully.

Gabe laughed shortly. "Fuck, no," he said. "I'm giving you guys a mission."

Spencer looked over his shoulder at the three of them. "Yeah, me and Brendon are kind of busy with the last mission you gave us," he said.

"All of you," Gabe said, and Ryan froze.

Spencer said, "Gabe. What?"

Gabe sighed, running his hands through his hair. "There's an underground system of slaves in Vesper7," he said. "They're very good at keeping it secret, which is why their Governor can answer to the Union that he doesn't know a thing without coming under suspicion. We've obtained a location but it masquerades as a brothel, which is—" He paused, making a face. "—legal, in a manner of speaking."

"If it's not a brothel," Brendon said suddenly, "you mean they're—"

"Pleasure slaves," Gabe said. "Yes. We need you to go in there and arrange to buy one, or sell one, or – anything, as long as you get the paperwork and enough evidence for us to send in Union Troops and shut them down."

"I – somebody else," Ryan said, stepping forward. "Jon's still wounded, and it's not, it's not our responsibility, you can send someone else—"

"Anyone else will take twice as long as you to get to them," Gabe said sharply. "And you're an Ambassador of the Union, Ryan. Don't try and tell me what your responsibility is. You know as well as I do why you're going to be invaluable in a situation like that."

Ryan sucked in a sharp breath. "How lucky for you," he said softly, "that my past is so valuable to the Union."

"Ryan," Spencer said, and Ryan looked at him, curling his hands into fists.

"What?" he said. "I'm sorry, is that not self-sacrificing enough for you? I forgot how you chose to stay here, how you refuse to move on, your stupid fucking fight for something that nobody gives a shit about anymore, that nobody—"

"Shut up, Ryan," Jon said, and Ryan whirled around, glaring at him, mouth open. Jon said, very softly, "That's our boss," and Ryan huffed and shut his mouth.

"Fine, whatever," he said.

"Listen," Gabe began, but Brendon interrupted.

"We'll do the job," he said.

"Hey," Spencer said, turning, and Ryan folded his arms, waiting for it, but Spencer just looked at Brendon, raised his eyebrows. "Yeah?" he said, and Brendon smiled, big and warm.

"Of course," he said, and on the screen, Gabe nodded.

"I'm going to send you through the necessary files now," he said. "The Vesper7 system is about ten days flight from your current position – we need you to send us a plan within the next five days so we can clear it. I'm recommending Ryan and Brendon for the actual infiltration attempt. Good luck. Stay in touch."

The screen went black, before Pete reappeared. Ryan drew in a breath and said, low and hard, "Fuck you all."

"Ryan," Jon began.

"Shut up," Ryan snapped, hot anger rising in his throat, in his gut, clutching at him. "Fuck you, like you don't know exactly what this plan is – I'm a slave or some shit, right? I know how to act, I can go in and – or you'll be kind and make me the owner, the dealer, make me—"

"Listen," Spencer interrupted, "we need to talk about this later. I—"

"We're talking about this _now_ ," Ryan snarled. "I've been pretty good, I've stayed the fuck out of your way despite you _attacking_ me the other day, but if you think you can force me onto something like this—"

"You're not alone," Brendon said quietly. "It's not just you."

"None of the rest of you understand!" Ryan yelled. "You weren't there! You didn't live it, I fucking – you can't make me do something like this, you don't know what it's _like_ , you think because I escaped when I was fifteen there's something less, less degrading about it, less – how can you expect me to go in there, it's, I won't do it. I won't."

"Ryan," Jon tried again, eyes wide and anxious, coming closer, but Ryan shrugged away Jon's hand, shaking his head.

"You can't, Jon," he said. "I'm – you don't understand, I'm sorry, but none of you understand, none of you have a fucking _clue_ what it's like."

Brendon smiled crookedly. "I kind of understand," he said.

"Oh, yeah," Ryan said scathingly. "Read a book, did you?"

"No," Brendon said. "I was given to Vesper9's Governor's son as a birthday present when I was five."

Ryan stopped, stood very still. Everything seemed very silent all of a sudden, everyone frozen in place, except for Brendon, who shrugged his shoulders and offered Ryan an awkward smile. Ryan thought about the scars on his back, and didn't move a muscle.

"That's enough," Spencer said finally, voice rough. "That's – Ryan, get the fuck out."

"I," Ryan said, and then Jon took his elbow and guided him out of the room, and Ryan stumbled blindly after him, back to his own rooms, where he could sit very quietly in the dark.

\---

It took Spencer a couple of minutes to get the ship to change course, and by the time he'd done that, Brendon was gone. Spencer cursed under his breath and shouted something at Pete to get him to take care of it, making his way to Brendon's rooms as quickly as he could without falling over anything.

Brendon was folding his shirt neatly, standing in his pajama pants in the centre of the room. Spencer's throat felt very tight, and the thin, white and red lines on Brendon's back seemed to stand out more starkly than usual, harsh against the curve of Brendon's spine when he bent over. Spencer stood in the doorway without saying anything, and after a moment Brendon caught sight of him and turned around, smiled slightly.

"Hey," he said.

"You alright?" Spencer said.

Brendon kept smiling, shrugged his shoulders. "I'm fine," he said. "It's not a big deal."

"It kind of is," Spencer said.

"It doesn't have to be," Brendon said, turning around and starting to make his bed.

Spencer hesitated. "Should I have told Ryan and Jon?" he said, eventually. "Would you have preferred – I thought you wouldn't want everyone to know, but you shouldn't have to tell them yourself, you shouldn't have to – not like that."

"No," Brendon said. "No, you don't have to do stuff like that. It's fine, Spencer. It's – I'm fine with the way things are."

"You don't look fine," Spencer said, and Brendon laughed, shaking his head.

"I'm good," he said. "The mission sounds a little dangerous, I'm a bit nervous. But it'll be okay, and I'm – Ryan's going to have to try harder than that to upset me, seriously."

 _Please don't lie to me_ , Spencer thought, but he just said, "Can I come in?"

"Sure," Brendon said, and Spencer stepped inside, the doors closing smoothly behind him. He leaned against the wall and watched Brendon potter around the room.

"I'll talk to Ryan," he said.

"You mean you'll fight with Ryan," Brendon said, "and I'm not so sure that's a good idea."

Spencer raised his eyebrows. "You don't think I can hold my own?"

"I think you've kind of convinced us all on that," Brendon said, "but you should probably stop being so mean to Ryan."

Spencer gaped. "It's not like he's the nicest person in the world," he said, weakly.

"Sure, I know," Brendon said, and stopped to look up at Spencer and smile, a little curiously. "But he's totally in love with you, you know that, right?"

"What?" Spencer said, and promptly choked on air, stumbling over nothing until he righted himself again.

"Oh, shit, didn't you?" Brendon said, and bit his lip. "Sorry, dude, I mean – I thought you figured it out, that other day after you punched him."

"Ryan doesn't – doesn't – what!" Spencer said, a little hysterically. "I – Brendon, what the fuck, why – how would I have figured it out?"

"Well, he looks at you all the time," Brendon said reasonably, sitting on the bed and folding his hands in his lap. "He looks at you like you're – everything, or something, I don't know. And he said some things the other night, that made me realise." He shrugged, explained, "I thought at first you guys just had that 'old friends, new enemies, I want to fuck you' vibe going on, but I think he's pretty, I mean." He paused, tilted his head to stare at Spencer. "You seriously haven't noticed the way he looks at you?"

"I – no," Spencer said dumbly, and Brendon shrugged.

"I don't think _he_ really knows it," Brendon said, "if that helps. But I mean, if you want to follow it up, I don't think you'll have much trouble."

"I'm not in love with Ryan," Spencer said, even as something in his stomach twisted.

"Yeah, but you're not exactly neutral about him, either," Brendon said, still smiling in that strange, small way. "And you've got all that history, and you can't hardly bear to let him out of your sight when he's in a room, and I mentioned the 'want to fuck you' vibe, right?" Spencer looked at Brendon, frowning a little, and Brendon shrugged again, watching Spencer with something huge and impossible and infinitely generous in his eyes. "I'm just saying," Brendon said, and for the first time that night, Spencer felt like he kind of did understand what Brendon was saying.

"I'm not in love with Ryan," he repeated, and didn't look away.

Brendon stared back at him, and then laughed, rubbed the back of his neck with his palm awkwardly. "Alright, then, dude, suit yourself," he said, and Spencer took an unsteady step forward.

"Brendon," he said, and Brendon glanced back up at him, eyes wide, mouth slightly open. "Brendon," Spencer said, and he held out his hand. Brendon didn't take it, but he stood up and stepped forward just once, holding onto his own elbows, arms flat against his bare stomach. Spencer swallowed hard.

"I'm," Brendon said, and fell silent. Spencer stared at him, and after a moment, Brendon laughed hoarsely and said, "This has been a weird ten days."

"C'mere," Spencer said, and Brendon took another step forward. Spencer reached out across the space and his hand landed on Brendon's collarbone, fingers curling up on Brendon's shoulder, thumb pressing lightly against Brendon's throat. Brendon stared at him, and Spencer moved his thumb just slightly, dragging it soft against the skin until Brendon shivered and looked down.

"Come here," Spencer repeated, but when Brendon didn't move he did, following his outstretched hand until he was so close, their faces only inches apart. The air conditioning left a slight breeze, and Spencer looked down to see Brendon's nipples harden when Spencer's t-shirt shifted forward just enough for the cotton to graze his skin.

"I don't think you know," Brendon said, voice low, "what you want."

"Do you?" Spencer asked, and Brendon looked up at him, eyes wide and shocked. Spencer said, "I know some things."

"I don't think," Brendon began, and Spencer lowered his head and brushed his mouth against Brendon's, so soft, like the touch of wings against skin. Brendon closed his eyes, anyway, and rocked up slightly into Spencer's hand, his mouth.

"I know some things," Spencer repeated, and Brendon looked up at him, and his expression was so frightened that Spencer felt something dark and horrifying clutch at him, the same thing that made him have ugly and satisfying dreams about finding Governor Boyd and shoving him to the ground, stamping in his face again and again, breaking every one of his bones. In front of him, Brendon was light and small and warm.

"Spencer," Brendon said.

"Don't you believe me?" Spencer said.

Brendon stared at him. "I want to."

"If you don't, tell me to stop," Spencer said, and he kissed Brendon again, a little longer this time, but Brendon didn't tell him, not when Spencer kissed him harder or deeper or hotter, not when Spencer walked him backwards to the bed and fitted his hands over Brendon's bony hips, not when Spencer pulled the soft pajama pants down and slid his mouth over Brendon's cock, not when Spencer took off his own clothes and pulled Brendon close, not when Spencer stretched himself over Brendon and touched every inch of his skin and tried to make a claim that he had no right to but wanted anyway. Brendon said a lot of things, but he didn't tell Spencer to stop, not once.

\---

"Hnh," Brendon said, and batted lazily at Spencer. Spencer caught Brendon's hand and nipped lightly at his palm before pushing him back down on the bed on his stomach, hovering over Brendon with a knee on either side of his hips. Brendon said, "Spence, I – c'mere."

"In a minute," Spencer said, and pressed his lips to the back of Brendon's neck, breathing in the smell of sweat and skin, lingering for a moment. Brendon made a small, surprised sound, and Spencer leaned until he had his forehead resting lightly against the beginning of Brendon's hairline and waited for a moment before he shuffled down.

"What are you doing?" Brendon said, and Spencer kissed the first white line striping across Brendon's back, mouth soft and conciliatory. Brendon settled down into the bed, not obviously surprised, but taking a deeper breath than usual.

Spencer said, "Do you remember every one?"

"No," Brendon said. "I can't really remember – separate occasions. And I don't remember which came from which."

"Hmmn," Spencer said, and scooted down infinitesimally, ghosting his mouth along the next scar.

Brendon sighed, stretched out underneath him, and Spencer moved on to the next, taking his time with the fresher, redder ones, resisting the urge to bite just a little at Brendon's warm skin, let his teeth drag, even when Brendon arched his back a little and said, "Hey, harder, c'mon."

"In a minute," Spencer said again, and kept going. He didn't let himself count. He didn't think he wanted to know the exact number of scars on Brendon's back – or he did, but knew that knowing wouldn't do anything except make Brendon faintly embarrassed and Spencer angrier than he already was.

Brendon lay quiet a little longer, but by the time Spencer got down to his lower back, hands skating over Brendon's sides, he was jerking his hips in small, short movements against the sheets. Spencer grinned and pressed his mouth hot and open against Brendon's tailbone and Brendon groaned and, in an impressive display of speed and strength, flipped himself over and grabbed Spencer, dragging him up.

"You're incredibly romantic and all," Brendon told him breathlessly between hard, biting kisses, "but I'm gonna need to fuck you now, so."

Spencer guessed he could deal with that.

\---

Ryan said, "I didn't know."

"Yeah," Jon said. "Me either." He was lying on his back on the bed, hands folded under his head, staring at the ceiling.

"I mean. I just didn't. I wouldn't have said those things." Ryan was having trouble completing a sentence. It had been three days, and the idea of going out to face Spencer or, fuck, _Brendon_ made him feel slightly ill. On top of that, Jon was being kind but distant, which meant that he was pissed at Ryan, too.

Like now – Jon stayed quiet for a long time before he finally said, "You mean you wouldn't have said those things to Brendon."

Ryan frowned. "I have a point," he said. "You really. You can't know what it was like. What it is like."

"I know that," Jon said. "But – Ryan, you were kind of childish."

Ryan stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"It's like Spencer Smith brings out the worst in you," Jon said, and sighed. "It's a pity, because you're so busy trying to prove yourself to him—"

"I am _not_ ," Ryan said.

"You are," Jon told him. "It's understandable. You had a big fight and you haven't seen him in years and of course you want to appear – capable and over him and his ship and your past or whatever. But I think you're going about it in a really bad way."

"Oh, yeah?" Ryan said. Somewhere beneath the stupid dullness of the past few days, Ryan clenched his fists, nails digging slightly into his palms. "How would you go about it?"

"Hey," Jon said, warning, and Ryan stood up.

"No, really," he said. "I'm really very interested. How would you go about it? Would you fix everything? Would you apologise and make it so that it was a pleasant working relationship? Would you flirt with the pilotuntil Spencer warmed to you because you can make fucking _Brendon Urie_ happy?"

"I'd go about it with a little more maturity than you are," Jon said, flushing and rising to his feet, too. He was shorter than Ryan, though, short enough that Ryan could sneer down at him, well aware that he was cutting off the last person who still liked him on the ship, unable to care. Besides which, Jon wasn't denying anything, and even if he had that would have been a lie, because Ryan had _seen_ him, and Ryan knew Jon, knew exactly what Jon was like when he was trying to charm someone, knew it as well as if Jon had practiced it on Ryan himself, but Jon didn't, Jon practiced it on Brendon Urie, and Ryan wanted to _burn_ something.

"Sure you would," Ryan said. "You're talented. That's why you're an Ambassador, and that's why we're a team, because you're _so fucking good_ that you can get saddled with _me_ and still come out with only a mild kind of bullet wound—"

"Ryan," Jon said, rubbing his eyes. "It's not like that. I, come on, it's not like that, you know it's not. I'm just saying, you're better than this."

"You don't know that!" Ryan shouted, waving goodbye to his temper. "You don't _know_ that, you weren't here, you have no idea what it was like, and what we were like, and you think you can get it all from a story but you _can't_. So stop being so patronising and admit already that you have no idea what's going on here and you can't possibly hope to ever understand. You never will."

Jon stared at him, face white, and Ryan drew in a shaky breath and then whirled around and stormed out of the room. He paced up to the bridge, nails still biting into his skin, anger hot and furious in his chest, ready to shout and be even more of an asshole than he already was, but the bridge was empty, and Ryan fell still in the doorway, staring. He felt unreasonably bewildered. He felt like a little kid, who had come home to find nobody else there.

Then a soft sound caught his attention down the hallway, a breathless sort of laugh, and Ryan knew that laugh, would know it anywhere. He turned and walked as quietly as he could through the steel inner plates of the ship, and heard Brendon say, voice thick with laughter and something else, "Shut up, shut up, fuck you—"

"I think it's my turn," Spencer said, and there was a rough, teasing undercurrent in his voice that made something in Ryan's blood chill, but not properly cold, not a cold that he could understand – something else, new and dark and terrifying, and so cold it burned.

Brendon said, "You could talk me into it," and Spencer said,

"Hey, man, I'm trying." Then Brendon made another sound, a high-pitched little whine, and Ryan had absolutely no excuse for following their low voices, couldn't pretend he hadn't guessed from the moment Spencer laughed like that what they were doing, but he walked on anyway, and pressed himself up against the side of the door, and peered through.

Spencer was on his _knees_ , was the thing, and Brendon had his head tilted back, swallowing compulsively while he dragged his fingers through Spencer's hair. "Fuck," Brendon said, low in his throat, and his face was unlike Ryan had ever seen anyone look like getting a blow job before – and Ryan had seen his fair share of blow job faces. It was awed and delighted and stupidly, gloriously happy all at once, and Brendon's eyes were almost all pupil, his mouth bitten red and open, lips swollen, and there was beard rash on his chin. He looked really fucking hot. He looked exactly like the kind of guys Ryan liked, the kind of boys Ryan picked up in bars on every planet in every solar system, the guys that Jon spotted and then rolled his eyes at, knowing that he was going to have to find new company for the night.

He looked like the vague images Ryan had conjured up behind closed eyes when he was fifteen, and Ryan kept forgetting to look at him.

It was different, seeing someone you knew in an entirely different light, Ryan thought, but he was having trouble keeping that justification running, because all he could do was stare at Spencer. Spencer's eyes were closed, his eyelashes soft against his face, and he looked like he was concentrating, cheeks hollowed enough that Ryan could _see_ the shape of Brendon's cock in his mouth, pressing against the skin of his cheek. Spencer was jerking Brendon off where he couldn't reach, moving his hand back to press behind Brendon's balls, but Ryan noticed all of that vaguely, out of the corner of his eye, busy staring at Spencer's face, that soft, careful concentration. It was sloppy and messy and Spencer hadn't done it very often before, or maybe ever, that was really clear. Ryan wanted to go and drop to his knees beside Spencer and show him how it was done. He wanted to kiss Spencer around Brendon's cock, wanted to be responsible for just a little bit of the look on both of their faces.

Spencer and Brendon didn't really need any help, though, that was also really clear. As Ryan watched Brendon made a rough, choking sound and thrust forward just once – he'd been careful, before, he hadn't moved, had kept still for Spencer – and Ryan watched Spencer's throat work. He spluttered a little bit, pulling back, but Brendon's knees were trembling a little and his eyes looked glazed, and Spencer was tugged back in by Brendon's hold on his hair. Ryan wondered if Spencer would remind Brendon to let go, would ease Brendon's fingers away, but instead Spencer leaned forward and nuzzled at the crease of Brendon's hip, pressing a tiny kiss to the skin there.

Brendon said something, too garbled for Ryan to hear, and Spencer smiled, very slightly. Ryan turned and slipped away.

\---

He woke up to the kind of stillness that only came when everyone else was asleep, the ship mostly powered down. For a moment he wondered if something had gone wrong again, and that was what had woken him, but their passage through space seemed smooth and uncomplicated. Ryan rolled over and tried, unsuccessfully, to go back to sleep. His head was pounding, though, and he kept running through things that couldn't be dealt with, mind racing – the fight with Jon that was lying uncomfortably unresolved, the throb of pain in his lip that was so much more faded now, the upcoming mission, Spencer on his knees, Brendon's face.

"Fuck," Ryan said, and pulled back his covers, getting out of bed and finding his socks on the floor. He didn't bother putting a shirt on. Instead, he made his way quietly out of his room and up to the deserted bridge, the red autopilot light blinking in the dark. Ryan sat down on the far side, pressing his bare back up against the cool metal, staring out the huge window to space rushing past.

He was having trouble slowing his head down; enough, anyway, that he didn't hear the humming until it was nearly upon him, and then Brendon said, "Oh!"

Ryan started, looking up, eyes wide. Brendon was wearing a pair of sleep pants and nothing else, a packet of Sugar-Protein halfway to his mouth, crumbs on his lips. As Ryan watched, he brushed them away with the back of his hand. Ryan didn't stop watching.

"Sorry," Ryan said, pushing further back into the wall. "I didn't mean to—"

"It's cool," Brendon said, smiling cheerfully down at him. "The ship's good on her own right now, I'm just keeping an eye on her."

"I'll let you get back to it," Ryan said, and put a hand to the floor to push himself up.

Brendon shook his head, though, stopping Ryan. "Be good to have some company, if you felt like staying up," he said, and now Ryan was staring for a different reason.

"I don't," he said, and swallowed hard. "You'd want me to keep you company?"

"Sure," Brendon said easily, sliding down to the floor beside Ryan. "What are we doing, anyway? Stargazing?"

"I couldn't sleep," Ryan said.

Brendon nodded. "That sucks," he said. "I hate it when you keep lying there and you're tired and you just – can't turn your brain off, you know?"

Ryan blinked at him. "Yeah," he said. "That's it. That's – exactly. Yes."

Brendon grinned. "So what's on your mind?" he said, and Ryan had a hundred answers and none of them were appropriate.

He looked away and said, roughly, "I didn't know. About you, on Vesper—"

"I know that," Brendon said. His voice was warm and soft, and decisive. That gave it the edge: something hard underneath, and Ryan wondered exactly who the fuck Brendon Urie was, anyway. "You made a mistake. It's cool. You weren't to know."

"I wouldn't have said that," Ryan said, rubbing his hand over his mouth, "if I had known."

"It's alright," Brendon said. "Really. I'm not mad at you or anything."

Ryan looked out at the endless sky. "I'm mad at me," he admitted, and Brendon shuffled a little closer. His warm, bare shoulder was bumping against Ryan's. Ryan didn't move a muscle.

"Well," Brendon said, and he sounded pleasantly surprised. "That's. Okay, good, then."

"I haven't met anyone else," Ryan said, forcing the words out of himself, because he felt like he owed them. "Any other – of the Freed, I mean. I avoided them. Us."

"That's fair," Brendon said, and Ryan wished that he didn't say everything so goddamn _carelessly_ , even though he knew it wasn't, knew that Brendon was a strange kind of beast, not quite like anyone else Ryan knew.

"So I wasn't expecting," Ryan said, and swallowed hard. He rubbed his face with his hands and laughed weakly, said, "Fucking Spencer."

"I know, right?" Brendon said, half-laughing. "He clearly just collects us. Like cats."

Ryan burst out laughing, short and startled and real, and when he looked up Brendon was smiling at him, eyes crinkling. "Right," Ryan said. "It's in his criteria to get on the ship or something. Maybe Jon lied about a dark past."

"Totally," Brendon said, nodding. "Although to be fair, he didn't ask me that. I kind of snuck on."

"Seriously?" Ryan said, and looked at Brendon cautiously, feeling strangely as though he was being given something. Brendon grinned, nodding.

"Yeah," he said.

"When?" Ryan asked.

"About four and a half years ago," Brendon said, leaning back and tapping his foot idly, restlessly. It made a soft, sliding sound in the quiet, the slap of skin against metal.

Four and a half years ago, Ryan had been on his third partner in four months, with seven yet to come before Jon ambled easily into the room and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, smiling, said, _So you're the difficult one?_ His mouth felt dry; he stared out the window, trying to block out the shadowy shape of Brendon in the corner of his eyes, and said, "That's a long time."

"Technically we've only been speaking for about three years," Brendon said, and bumped his knee against Ryan's very gently. "If that helps."

Ryan looked at him, raised his eyebrows. "You lived silently on a ship together for a year and a half?"

"He ignored me," Brendon said, grinning. "As soon as I convinced him that he needed a pilot – fuck, you should have seen the _Fever_ , he was doing his best but she was falling apart – he decided to hire me, but he didn't speak properly to me for ages." Ryan opened his mouth and Brendon said, casually, "I'm not angry at you, but if you ask me why or something, I'll punch you, too."

"I think I've been beaten up enough," Ryan said, flushing red and angry.

"Maybe," Brendon said, like he was seriously considering it. Ryan blinked at him and Brendon smiled back.

Ryan said, after a little while, "How long had you been Freed? When you found Spencer?"

"About two weeks," Brendon said, and Ryan started, stared at him. Brendon said, "When the abolition laws on my homeplanet were brought in, there was a lot of rioting and looting, on both sides of the fight, really. Anyway, the Union sent in a bunch of the old revolutionary ships as a peacekeeping force, and even though Spencer wasn't much good for that, the _Fever_ still had – has – enough of a name attached to her that just her presence was good enough. I had – nowhere to go, and I didn't want to stay in any of the accommodation they were providing for the Freed, let alone get one of their jobs. So I talked Pete into letting me stow away."

Ryan nodded. "That's cool," he said.

"One word for it," Brendon said, raising his eyebrows, and Ryan bit his lip.

"You said, um, that you were given to the Governor's son," he said, quietly. "I mean – if you don't want to—"

"I don't mind telling you," Brendon said, shrugging. "I was really little. I grew up as like – a friend for Governor Boyd's kids, on Dart. Mostly I was, like, a playmate, but the idea was for them to like me enough that when they got in trouble, I could be punished and it'd upset them."

Ryan stared. "Fuck," he said. "Fuck, Brendon. I."

"Yeah, I mean," Brendon said, and looked slightly awkward. "It was – the thing was, I was raised with them? And I knew that I didn't get as many presents or nice clothes or a nice bedroom or whatever, but I was _raised_ with them, and I kind of thought I was the black sheep, and that's why I got. Punished, and things, when they didn't. And Governor Boyd was away a lot, and his wife was always kind to me, so it was kind of a shock."

"What was?" Ryan said, narrowing his eyes, and Brendon shrugged again, smiling lopsided and beautiful in the dim light.

"Finding out I was a slave," he said, and Ryan gaped. Brendon said, "I was eleven. Governor Boyd came back from an international trip and when he greeted me I called him Dad. I didn't know. I figured I was just – the slightly unlucky son. Anyway, that was the worst thing I ever did, in terms of how much, um, trouble I got in."

"You were _eleven_?" Ryan repeated, and his voice cracked stupidly. Brendon looked up at him quickly, looking surprised.

"Yeah," he said. "But hey, don't – it was pretty miserable but I'm fine now, and—"

"Is that what you tell Spencer?" Ryan said, and Brendon stopped, looking properly affected for the first time, face frozen and hunted.

"He doesn't believe me," Brendon said, after a moment.

"He believes you enough," Ryan said. "He can't – no one can properly – eleven, Brendon, I can't."

"Plenty of people had it worse," Brendon said. "Plenty of—"

"Sure they did," Ryan said. "But I was a fucking _filing_ clerk, and the worst thing I ever had to do was try and keep my dad from being caught with alcohol, and I still can't, I still can't think properly, sometimes, I still can't stop hating them and me for what they did – for what I was, and degrees of something don't stop it from being, from being—"

"Ryan," Brendon said, voice wrecked, and Ryan stopped, trembling a little.

"How did you learn to fly?" he whispered.

"They taught me," Brendon said. "My – the Governor's children. They taught me so I could take them out places, and then I was the one who was flying the thing, so they didn't get in trouble." Ryan looked at him and Brendon said, fiercely, "I'm _good_ at it. I'm _glad_ they did."

Ryan drew in a breath. "Okay," he said. "Okay. Okay," and they sat still and quiet together for a long time.

\---

Spencer hadn't actually meant to talk to Jon. He'd been looking for Brendon, with the vague intention of dragging him away to make out for a little while, but Brendon had been guiding the _Fever_ through a small meteor shower. That would have been fine, except Ryan was leaning next to him at the controls, talking in a low voice and occasionally reaching over to tweak a lever, and Spencer had stopped and stared in the doorway for a moment before he spun around and stalked away.

He ended up sitting in the mess, eating the very last bar of real chocolate that they had, which he'd been saving for a special occasion, rather than an opportunity to sulk. He'd been considering setting up a videocall with home, only then he'd have to talk to his mother about Ryan being onboard, and there was no way in hell he could stomach that right now. Glowering at the table seemed to have been the plan for the afternoon, until Jon came and sat down across from Spencer and, ignoring completely all of Spencer's snapped responses and hard stares, talked at him about narrow scrapes that he'd managed to get himself into, and the fussy dinner he'd had to sit through with a famous Governor a few years ago, and his friend Tom and the joyrides they used to go on, hotwiring various independent government vessels to do so. Very soon, it became impossible not to listen, and after that impossible not to laugh and join in, and before Spencer really knew what was going on, a few hours had passed and Brendon had come in yawning and demanding to be taken to bed, and Spencer was beaming stupidly at Jon across the table.

The trouble was, Brendon really did walk into the room declaring, "I'm tired, Spencer Smith, you need to come to bed with me," and Spencer flushed hotly and darted a wary glance at Jon.

Jon grinned. "Oh, I totally called that," he said, and Brendon gave him an unreadable glance, the same one he seemed to wear a lot whenever the fact that Brendon and Spencer were – _something_ , now, came up.

Spencer shrugged and got to his feet, chair scraping backwards. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "We should start talking about the mission properly, I guess."

"Sure," Jon said, and gave them a lazy salute. Brendon slung an arm around Spencer's shoulders and they walked out together.

Brendon kept looking at him funny. "What?" he said, about eight times, getting increasingly more frustrated, and finally Brendon laughed, quick and short.

"You have such a crush on Jon Walker," Brendon said. "It's hilarious."

Spencer gaped at Brendon for a moment, spluttering and ready for Brendon to _take it back_. He kissed Brendon, pointedly, but Brendon just kissed him back and then started giggling again.

"Well," Spencer said, after a minute, "you do, too."

"He's _Jon Walker_ ," Brendon said, with a little sigh. "Of course I do." He walked a little way ahead, hands in his pockets, and then looked back and said, "Yours is bigger, though."

"Nuh- _uh_ ," Spencer said, and chased Brendon through to their room, tackling him down onto the bed and smiling, and then they kind of stopped talking coherently for a while.

\---

Spencer woke when the ship lurched and he was thrown out of bed, to the unmistakeable sound of bombs. "Holy _shit_ ," Brendon gasped, sitting up, and then he was scrambling to his feet and running out of the room, Spencer following quickly behind him as soon as he'd pulled a t-shirt on to go with his boxers.

Ryan and Jon were already up on the bridge, staring aghast at the image on the screen Pete was showing them. "It's a force from Delta," Jon said, rubbing at his injured shoulder absently. "They've – they've followed us."

"This is open rebellion," Ryan said quietly. "Against the Union, this isn't a couple of – pissed off politicians at a dinner who decide to poison the Ambassadors, this is their _military force_ coming after us—"

"Brilliant," Spencer snapped. "Just what we need."

Ryan shot a startled glance at him, looking too surprised to be angry. "We didn't ask for this," he said.

"No," Spencer agreed, "but Delta never came after me and Brendon before."

Jon and Ryan stared at him; Ryan's face was tight and confused, and Jon just looked hurt. Spencer flushed a little but stood firm, even as Brendon shot him an annoyed look and shook his head.

"I think we can worry about that later," Brendon said, going to the controls and typing in a code quickly, a new shiny keypad sliding out from below the first keyboard. "I need – Jon, can you head down to the engine room? I need someone there to do repairs if we need, and you're the best we've got—"

"On it," Jon said, and half-ran out of the room.

"Pete, I need alerts if something comes within a mile radius of hitting us," Brendon said, and onscreen, Pete grimaced.

"Might be a bit much," he said. "We've got missiles coming thick and fast – unless you want the sirens to be blaring constantly—"

"Fuck," Brendon said. "Okay, make that a hundred metres, then. And I want a scan of our surroundings."

Spencer leaned up against the wall, swallowing hard. The trouble was he wasn't very much use at all in situations like this, didn't have anything he could do except sit and stay out of Brendon's way, but it drove him crazy not being able to do anything. In front of Ryan's shrewd gaze, that felt worse, and he felt even more useless.

"Shit," Pete said, and all three of them looked up. "They're driving us into a meteor storm," he said, and Spencer cursed under his breath. A meteor storm was hard to handle, and though Brendon was the best pilot Spencer knew and could usually guide them through it, he also usually didn't have a rogue military armada on his tail trying to shoot them down, either.

"Alright," Brendon said, and as Spencer watched he drew a breath, closing his eyes for a second. He opened them, and even though his face was pale, lip imprinted with white where he'd been biting it, his eyes were steady and Spencer felt abruptly calmer. "Everyone hold onto something," Brendon said, and then they veered sharply left and Spencer grabbed at a bar sticking out from the wall, presumably put there at some point for that exact purpose. Ryan staggered across the floor, but caught himself from falling, pacing to the end of the control desk and staring intently out into the dark, waiting for the meteors.

Brendon reached out for the intercom button and said, "Alright there, Jon?"

"Fine," Jon responded, even though he sounded a little shaken through the crackle of the intercom. "You gonna warn me next time?"

"Nope," Brendon said, and smiled quickly. "Hold onto something. Get ready. Here we go."

The _Fever_ dived down and Spencer gasped and clutched at his bar with both hands, blood pounding in his ears, mouth dry. Brendon's chair rolled across the floor with him in it and he dragged himself back quickly. Ryan reached over and pressed the lock button for the chair and Brendon grinned over at him quickly. Spencer held on for dear life.

Brendon banked and sent them up again, chasing spirals out through the dark. "I'm gonna try and lose them," he said absently, "but it's dead space, so I don't think we're going to have much luck until we hit those meteors—"

"Okay," Spencer gasped, and Brendon glanced over his shoulder and smiled, sweet and bright, and twisted the _Fever_ to the right, putting on a burst of extra speed for a moment. A second later, a missile streaked past them, the ship rocking in its wake, and Spencer cursed again. Brendon paid no notice to him.

"Up," Ryan said abruptly, and Brendon pulled back a lever immediately, sending the _Fever_ flying up high.

"What was," Spencer began, and then Pete appeared onscreen again, eyes huge.

"Shit," he breathed. "They've got Black-tipped missiles, my sensors can't detect them – how'd you know, Ryan?"

"They have to have special lasers," Ryan said. "You can see them flashing. Right, Brendon," and Brendon swerved, laughing short and sharp. Spencer's blood thundered through his veins and he was abruptly glad for his lack of official clothing; the idea of being hemmed in right now by much more than cool cotton wasn't very appealing. Brendon was sweating, bare back hunched over the controls, but he was still smiling very slightly in the corner of his mouth, and Spencer thought that could never not be a good sign, for anything, for everything.

"Here they come," Pete said grimly, and Spencer saw the first of the red meteors hurtling towards them.

Brendon glanced at the cameras Pete was still displaying on the other screen. "Damnit," he said, "they're gonna follow us all the way through – I'd hoped they'd drop back—"

"Can you get us out?" Spencer said, and Brendon nodded.

"It's gonna be rough," he said, and then something slammed into the ship, hard, and they were all sent flying, Spencer smacking into the cold floor hard enough to make him gasp, winded. Ryan was tucked into a corner, wheezing, but Brendon had clung to his seat.

"We get hit?" Jon said over the speakers, sounding panicked, and Brendon shook his head, leaning forward to press the intercom button.

"Clipped," he said. "Very slightly. When we get hit you'll know. How's the pressure gage holding up?"

"Heating fast," Jon said. "I've got the fans working at full blast, though. I'm gonna add water last minute, only if we have to. Be prepared for a jolt."

"Incoming," Pete said, and Ryan glanced up at the cameras and swore.

"You gotta take a diversionary route," he said. "Brendon, you gotta—"

"I'm trying to make it through the meteors," Brendon said, "I can't concentrate on—"

"Move over," Ryan said hastily, and shoved into the seat next to Brendon, typing in a code and elevating another control pad, setting red buttons blinking. Spencer opened his mouth to say something but Brendon turned and grinned at Ryan, fierce and wild, and Spencer shut his mouth again, held on tight and let the two of them do it.

Half the time he didn't really understand what was going on; their low curses, the sharp dip and swerve that made Brendon cheer out loud and take a second to ruffle Ryan's hair, Ryan smiling through his scowl, the sudden moments when Ryan went pale and Brendon went completely serious, until the ship rocked in an unknown object's wake and they were both grinning again.

Something cracked, loud in the heart of the _Fever_ , and Spencer was almost sent flying forward again, Brendon and Ryan grabbing onto each other to keep from falling off the chair. "Jon and the pressure gage," Ryan said, and Brendon made a humming noise and sent them spiralling down again, meteors rocketing past so fast and so close that their dust was left on the glass, distracting for a moment before the automatic sensors wiped it away.

"I'm gonna take her left," Brendon said, and Ryan nodded, fingers flying across the controls.

"When we come out of the storm," he said. "Where will we be?"

"Dead space again," Brendon said. "And they're sticking right behind us."

"If they corner us there again, we're fucked," Ryan said, and Brendon nodded. Neither of them looked particularly concerned. Spencer gaped at them. Ryan said, "Are we going to—?"

"What are you thinking?" Brendon asked.

"Well," Ryan said. "Hyper."

"Could blow up the ship," Brendon said, sounding pretty cheerful about the idea. The conversation paused for a moment when Ryan bit his lip and twisted the _Fever_ around and back for a split second to avoid a missile, before setting them back on course.

"Yeah," he agreed. "If it doesn't, they will, though."

"No prisoners?" Brendon asked, sounding interested. Ryan shrugged, and Brendon said, "Anyway, yeah, of course."

"Um," Spencer said. "Anyone want to tell me what hyper is?"

"In a little while, dear," Brendon said, and for a moment everything was drowned out by a roar and an escalating whine as some of the missiles collided with meteors, showering rock everywhere, and Ryan and Brendon bent over their controls, tiny, darting little movements of the keys that sent them pushing impossibly through. Spencer couldn't hear a thing behind the clamour, but he saw Brendon and Ryan laughing together, faces bright and open.

"—that we need," Ryan was shouting, sounding slightly frustrated, when Spencer could hear again.

"I'm kind of busy!" Brendon said back, as the ship jumped and lurched sideways again, and Ryan made a face and leaned into Brendon, putting one arm around his shoulders to fit properly so he could type at a tiny screen just out of his reach, in close to Brendon. They stayed like that, pressed tight together, and Spencer wondered exactly what they were fighting, what was attacking them.

"Jon," Ryan said, leaning into Brendon again to reach over his far shoulder for the intercom, "we're gonna try something a little weird. You okay?"

"Fine," Jon said in response. "Guys. You've only got about a day's worth of fuel left, and you're going through it really fast."

Ryan and Brendon exchanged a glance, and then Ryan shook his head and said, holding down the button, "Not a problem right now. See if you can do anything about conserving it – shut down the bits you can. We can go dark if you need."

"Right," Jon said, and there was a hum and a whir as most of the lights went off. The consoles glowed bright, and Pete onscreen, barking out warnings more and more frequently now. Spencer could see the edges of the meteor storm, though, and they were coming less fast now, the ship a little steadier in its path.

Ryan glanced at Brendon. "You ready?" he asked.

"Yeah," Brendon said, and looked over at Spencer. "We gonna say goodbye and stuff?"

"Not today," Ryan said, and they typed in codes on each of their screens, pulling levers and buttons too fast for Spencer to follow properly, and there was a small, purring sound, and Pete said the kind of curse word Spencer still blushed to say, and for a moment everything was blurry and full of white light.

Then they were cruising through dark space, slow and easy. "Fuck," Ryan said, sounding surprised.

"Fuck," Brendon echoed, and turned to look at Ryan properly, beaming. Ryan grinned back at him, huge and bright, the smile Ryan only ever gave someone when he was stupidly happy, and something in Spencer's chest went tight. Brendon laughed, and then he leaned forward and kissed Ryan, fisting his hands in Ryan's t-shirt and pulling him in tight, their faces close together, hair messed, Ryan gasping and sliding his arms around Brendon's hot skin, and Spencer stared, leaning forward, mouth open, as Ryan moaned slightly and Brendon bit at his mouth.

The _Fever_ bumped, ever so slightly, nothing compared to the previous jolts, and Ryan flailed his arms around wildly and fell off the chair. Brendon peered down at him, hair mussed and eyes bright, and said, "Can I give you a hand?"

Ryan looked at Brendon and then Spencer, eyes huge and terrified. He let out a breath that sounded like a gasp, and scrambled to his feet, turning and running out of the room. Brendon watched him go ruefully.

"Brendon?" Spencer said, in a choked voice, and Brendon turned and shrugged.

"Sorry," he said. "I thought it might help. Better luck next time."

Spencer blinked. Over the intercom, Jon said plaintively, "Guys? Did we survive?"

¬

\---

Ryan stayed in the shower for thirty minutes, scrubbing at his skin until he felt like he'd gotten rid of Brendon completely, Brendon's mouth and hot, sweaty body pressed up against Ryan, Brendon's arm around him and hair brushing his face, Brendon's stupid fucking grin, and behind them Spencer's eyes, watching everything, tracking every single goddamn movement. Ryan stayed in the shower until Jon was banging on the door and asking if everything was okay, and then he got out and dressed carefully, and let his hair dry naturally, and came out and said, "I think we need to make a plan."

Jon stared at him. "What?"

"A plan," Ryan said. "For the Vesper7 mission. I think we need to put some sort of details together. It's less than a week until we arrive. I think it's time we started thinking about a direct plan of action."

"Um, okay," Jon said. "You want to tell me what went on in there?"

"We went into Hyper," Ryan said. "You jump through space. Faster than lightspeed. You end up somewhere ahead of your course, sometimes. It's risky, but it worked."

"I'm not talking about that," Jon said. "You wanna tell me what else?"

"I really, really don't," Ryan said calmly, and Jon grabbed him when he turned to go, fisting his hand in Ryan's sleeve and dragging him back.

"Hey," he said, and studied Ryan's face intently. "Ryan. You okay?"

 _Jon_ , Ryan wanted to say, wanted things to be easy again, just them so that Ryan could sink into Jon's hug and breathe him in and pretend everything was normal because Jon let him get away with shit like that. He said, "Yes."

"You're a liar," Jon said, and Ryan shrugged and turned. Jon followed him.

Brendon and Spencer were sitting in the mess, still in their sleep clothes. Ryan stood in the doorway and said, "We need a plan."

They both looked up at him immediately, and Ryan almost turned and ran again: the terrible distance in Spencer's eyes, the strange warmth in Brendon's. Instead he swallowed hard and set his jaw, tilting his chin up, and after a moment Jon pushed gently past him to take a seat.

"So what have we got so far?" Jon asked. "Two of us go in, two of us stay here? Or three? What?"

"Two's probably best," Spencer said. "That's how most of the sales are conducted. They're small, so as not to attract suspicion. One of us can be the owner, the other the slave."

Brendon hesitated. "Aren't pictures of us all gonna be out there?"

"Well, not of you and me," Spencer said, reasonably. "There's a reason we've avoided that. And Ambassadors only have their names on the Interspace servers, it's expressly forbidden for photos to be taken of them, so they're few and far between. We shouldn't be too recognisable."

"I could," Jon began, and Ryan folded his arms.

"Jon's been shot recently," he said. "It's not safe for you to go."

"Ryan," Jon said, but Ryan raised his eyebrows and stared him down, until Jon made an exasperated sound and shrugged, leaning back in acquiescence. "Who, then?" he asked.

Spencer hesitated. "We need people who know the culture," he said slowly. "You know I would if I—"

"Yeah," Brendon said. "You and me, Ross." He looked up and grinned. Ryan looked back blankly.

"Fine," he said. "I'm the slave."

"No," Brendon said.

"Yeah," Ryan said. "It's cool. I've been chained up before. It'll be fine."

"You haven't been chained up like that," Brendon said, looking properly unhappy for the first time that night. "You don't have to—"

"Brendon," Ryan said. "I'm the slave."

Spencer looked at him narrowly, and Jon looked cautious, like he was figuring things out, but Ryan didn't move. After a moment, Brendon released a breath and said, "Okay, fine. Thank you."

"Right," Ryan said, and sat down in the final spare chair, next to Spencer. He wondered if it was possible to shuffle into the far edge of the table unobtrusively. Spencer wouldn't stop _watching_ him. "Do we have blueprints?"

"Pete?" Brendon said, and onscreen, Pete nodded. A second later, a 3D image filtered down onto the table, and Ryan drew a breath.

"Let's get started, then," he said. They did.

\---

It was easy to get lost in the work. It was the most comfortable Ryan had been on the whole awful trip, all of them close enough to each other but busy, running through details and minute-by-minute plans, trying to work out the best places to hide the hidden cameras, Jon fiddling around the with the circuitry so that they wouldn't set off the sensors. There was a lot to do, and a small period of time to do it. Ryan could stay busy, and there was something strange and satisfying about being in the same room as Brendon and Spencer without having to fight or snap or be constantly on his guard.

Not that it was entirely easy to forget everything, of course – Brendon's mouth shockingly hot on his, Spencer on his knees in front of Brendon, the hickeys that they didn't even seem to notice. Besides which, Spencer had picked up a really disconcerting habit of watching Ryan all the time, and Jon and Brendon sat too close together. Ryan still couldn't wait to get off the _Fever_. He thought he'd left her for good five years ago. Now, he was trying to avoid noticing how familiar she still was, how he'd been dreaming her up again most nights for as long as he'd been gone. It was hard, walking around her and not remembering how he and Spencer had stolen her together from Spencer's father's small fleet, how much trouble they'd been in, how much it had been worth it; how she became more well-known, beloved by supporters of the Union everywhere, and how she'd been theirs all the same, always theirs.

Ryan had given up his claim a long time ago, but his subconscious didn't seem to care about that, and the controls under his hands that night had felt warm and quick, almost responding to just a thought, as if he'd never been gone. He'd loved the ship more than anything, and then he'd hated her more than anything, and now it was twenty-four hours before they were due to enter Vesper7 and embark properly on their mission, and sitting with his back up against the wall in one of the large, mostly empty rooms felt closer to safe than anything Ryan had been for a long time.

Brendon and Jon were sprawled in the middle of the room, heads bent close together as they poured over some maps, and Spencer was talking quietly to the screen of a miniature comm device in another corner. By the slight frown between his eyebrows, and the low, serious way he was talking, Ryan guessed it was Gabe, calling in for last minute confirmation and details of their plan.

After a moment Spencer flipped the comm closed and looked up, catching Ryan watching him. He raised his eyebrows and Ryan looked away, quickly, but his gaze wouldn't settle, darting from corner to corner, and after a moment Spencer stood up and came over to him.

"Are you nervous?" he asked, and Ryan shook his head. Spencer said, "It'll be fine."

 _You're not the one who has to go in, asshole,_ Ryan thought, with more than a little exasperation. Jon had been kind to him this past week, though, despite their stupid fight (that was still hanging between them, awkward and unresolved), and Ryan had decided to practice restraint, so he just said, "I know. The plan's good."

"Alright then," Spencer said.

Ryan nodded, and across from them, Brendon made a decisive sort of cheer and Jon rolled up the maps, chucking them haphazardly across the room. "Enough!" he said, and they stood up and ambled towards Ryan and Spencer, sitting back down on the floor once they were done. Brendon left his legs stretched out across the floor, and his foot kept tapping Ryan's knee. Ryan pulled himself discreetly back closer against the wall, pointedly ignoring the bright, mischievous look in Jon's eyes.

"Are we done?" Brendon demanded, flopping backwards. "I can't concentrate anymore, seriously, I'll die if we have to go through one more detail."

"What do you want to do?" Spencer asked, sliding down to sit on the floor with them. He sounded almost lazy, drawling out the words. Ryan breathed in, breathed out.

"Oh, you know," Brendon said, and his voice dropped low and warm. Ryan darted a glance up, startled, and Brendon was smiling very slightly; Spencer's eyes were dark. Jon didn't seem very disconcerted at all, was grinning crookedly, and Ryan wondered what was going on, what exactly they'd gotten themselves into.

"Don't elaborate," Jon said, and Brendon laughed, sitting up slightly.

"I want music," he said. "Pete, give us music."

"Why?" Pete asked, popping up onscreen, and Brendon shrugged.

"We're in safezones until tomorrow," he said. "Don't have to listen for sensors, don't have to worry about missing something. I want to listen." He propped his chin in his hand and said, "Hey, Ryan, you remember the dance?"

"I – what?" Ryan said, blinking.

"The dance," Brendon said. "Come on, don't tell me you didn't do it – I was taught when I was thirteen, the first time I met other slaves." Jon looked slightly uncomfortable and Spencer just sat there, blank-faced, but Ryan leaned forward a little, couldn't help it. "You know the one," Brendon continued. "Whenever they let everyone off for the one night at Midsummer, with the fires, and the food, and the dancing – you seriously don't remember?"

Ryan remembered. Let any group of people exist for long enough in solidarity and a culture of sorts would form, and spread across all the planets the customs of the enslaved were mostly similar. The celebrations at Midsummer was the one night a year all of them were sure to be let off for the night, although not on the planets who were crueller, worried about their slaves rebelling. Certainly on Ryan's home planet, though, and Brendon's too, obviously, and Ryan remembered it as the one night that he didn't share with Spencer, remembered following his father through the quiet streets until they were out of the town completely, out to the huge barn with the bonfires burning merrily outside it.

The dance was a simple one, originally popular amongst the lower class, and it was fun and breathless, but it slowed down at the end, and Ryan looked at Brendon and imagined Brendon's hands on his hips, Brendon drawing him in, and shook his head.

"I don't remember it," Ryan said.

"Really?" Spencer said suddenly. Ryan tried not to jump. " _I_ remember it. You taught me, remember?"

 _"That was a long time ago," Ryan said._

 _"I could teach you," Brendon said, smiling cautiously. There was a stupid amount of hope in his eyes, bright and clear, and Ryan looked away. "It's easy, you'd get the hang of it again really soon."_

 _"No," Ryan said._

 _"Come _on_ ," Brendon said, grinning. "Come dance with me."_

"No," Ryan repeated, and Brendon looked away, mouth twisting down.

"I'll dance it," Jon said, getting to his feet. Ryan glanced at him sharply but Jon looked cheerful and good-natured, and Brendon brightened instantly, jumping to his feet and shouting for Pete to put something on. Pete obliged, and the sound of fiddles cut through the ship as Brendon took Jon's hands and led him through the first steps, slow and easy, until Jon got the hang of it and skipped terribly and happily alongside Brendon. He was really bad at it, but Brendon was really good, in an understated sort of way, enough to make it long smooth and well put together despite Jon tripping over most of the steps.

They were both laughing, crowding in close to each other, and Ryan realised with strange shock that they were flirting, Jon's mouth curling in the corner in that slightly wicked way that Ryan would always recognise, Brendon's face open and smiling, leaning further into Jon's space than he needed to for the sake of the dance. Ryan shot a glance at Spencer, but Spencer was grinning and tapping along to the beat, and Ryan couldn't quite look away from any of them, all three of them strange and new in the bright light.

"I'm going to bed," he mumbled, standing up. "Big day tomorrow."

"Sleep well," Spencer said, soft but clear beside him. Ryan swallowed, and left.

\---

Brendon deposited himself in Spencer's lap after Jon left, hours since Ryan had gone, kissed Spencer and said, "I'm going to bed."

"Okay," Spencer said, smiling crookedly. "Can I come with?"

"I thought you were going to ask that," Brendon informed him, grinning. "Which is why I told you, so I could follow it up with 'stay in your own bed tonight, asshole. I need to sleep properly'."

"You can sleep properly with me there," Spencer protested. "I can be unobtrusive!"

"You _steal the blankets_ ," Brendon said. "Every fucking night. You're sleeping in your own room, or I'll – report you for inappropriate conduct to Gabe or something."

Spencer snickered. "Like Gabe can talk."

"Nevertheless," Brendon said severely, and Spencer tilted Brendon's chin up with his hand and kissed him, slow and deep, still a little wondrous that he was allowed to do this. Brendon sighed and sank closer to him, and Spencer murmured,

"What are you trying to do?"

"You know what I'm doing," Brendon said.

Spencer swallowed. "I don't think it's as easy as you think you can make it."

"I'm doing my best," Brendon said. "It would be nice if the rest of you got onboard. Right now I like Jon best."

"Should I be jealous?" Spencer asked, and Brendon laughed, standing up and heading off towards the corridor.

"You should be a lot of things before you're jealous," he said, on his way. "But sure, if you like." He stopped, turning to look over his shoulder, and said, "By the way, you're a liar."

"What?" Spencer said.

"You know what," Brendon said, and disappeared.

Spencer sat quietly for a little while, trying to get into the space he needed. This time tomorrow Brendon and Ryan would be gone, and he wasn't quite sure he knew how to deal with that. He and Brendon had never done a mission alone like this before, one without the other, they had always, always been together, and now, now it felt worse. Spencer wondered if saying _you can't die, I love you way too fucking much to be able to deal with that_ before Brendon headed off on a mission like that was too cliché. He wondered if Brendon would make that face he did when he was trying to look stupid rather than cry, and punch him in the arm, hard. It seemed probable.

At least, Spencer thought carelessly as he stood up and began to make his way to his own bedroom, at least he didn't have to particularly worry about Ryan. Ryan had been on tons of missions without him in the past five years; Spencer barely knew Ryan, these days, Brendon's inappropriate crusade aside. It was better to just have to stress over one person, Spencer thought, and stopped short in a doorway, staring through at the room's only occupant. _You're a liar,_ Brendon said in his head, smiling.

Ryan was standing with his back to the doorway. There was music playing softly in a corner, a tiny stereo that they kept in a storage container somewhere rather than Pete playing whatever Ryan wanted through the computer, and he was stepping in slow lines hesitantly, on his own, moving carefully. Spencer leaned against the frame and thought about the way Ryan had watched Brendon and Jon, thought about how different they had been, spinning and fast and laughing, so entirely removed from Ryan moving slow and awkward, taking a breath and starting again, retracing his steps over and over.

The music was an album Ryan had played on repeat for a while. Spencer hadn't listened to it for five years. He knew every word.

He stepped forward lightly, though not lightly enough to keep Ryan from noticing him. Ryan spun around and flushed red, opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Spencer put one hand on Ryan's hip, twisted the other up to curl their fingers together.

"It's easier with a partner," he said.

Ryan swallowed. "I don't remember how to lead."

"That's alright," Spencer said. "I do." He counted them off, and set them in slow circles around the room. Ryan's cheeks were pink, and he wouldn't meet Spencer's gaze, but something was thrumming and growing in Spencer's chest. _Please don't die_ , he thought, and shifted closer just a little, falling into Ryan's space. Ryan sighed, and tilted his head forward, and then he had his head bowed over Spencer's shoulder, resting on him a little.

They missed the part where they were meant to both move out, releasing each other for a second, and Spencer just started the dance again. Ryan was breathing raggedly, tiny little breaths of air, and Spencer held him close, wondered how it had been so long, how they had managed to grow in just the right way to ensure they fit together as well as ever. Ryan smelled the same.

"I'm scared," Ryan said suddenly. "About tomorrow."

"Me too," Spencer said. "I don't want to wait on the ship."

"I don't want to go on the planet," Ryan said, and he moved back enough that they could smile at each other for a second before Ryan shifted back into Spencer's space. Ryan breathed in steadily, and Spencer moved his hand up, spanning it across Ryan's back, feeling the delicate bones of Ryan's spine. He was so very small, Spencer thought, it didn't seem possible that he could go out into this, he and Brendon were both so very small.

Ryan said, "How long have you and Brendon been. You know."

"Not very long," Spencer said. Ryan closed his eyes, and sank closer to him.

"Since I was – since we were on the ship?" he asked.

"Yes," Spencer said, and Ryan nodded. Spencer snuck a glance at him but he couldn't see properly with Ryan's head resting on his shoulder, and all he had to go by was Ryan's body close and warm against his, Ryan's hand hot and dry and trembling very slightly in his. Spencer thought about being very young, and making friends with the boy who worked at his father's office, thought about Ryan sneaking into bed with him on the nights his own father was bad, and how small Ryan had seemed in his arms, how very delicate. They had both of them grown, but Ryan hadn't grown enough.

"Are you in love with him?" Ryan asked, so quietly Spencer almost missed it.

"Yes," Spencer said, and Ryan nodded again. The music ended, but neither of them stopped moving.

\---

Spencer didn't sleep very well. It would have been better, almost, if he was distracted by Ryan, caught up in the strange, isolated room and Ryan not snapping or yelling or acting as though Spencer didn't exist, like some strange sort of ceasefire had been called. Instead, he lay awake running through details of their plan tomorrow, running through the countless ways it could go wrong, the ways every single one of them could be killed.

Eventually he gave up on sleeping and got up, made himself some coffee and sat mutely in the grey light of the mess. He was staring into his coffee, head racing enough that Jon appearing in the doorway caught him by surprise.

Spencer didn't know Jon very well. He knew these things: that Jon was clever and funny and a good mechanic, and that he told stories well, and that Ryan looked at him with a fierce kind of love Spencer would never not be able to recognise, and that Jon was brave, because he had been shot and because he had not been afraid when they were attacked.

Right now, Jon looked exhausted and small and not very brave at all. "Can I sit here?" he said, and Spencer nodded.

Jon came and sat next to him, and after a moment Spencer sighed and tilted to the side, resting against Jon's shoulder. "Couldn't sleep?" he asked, and Jon shook his head.

"I'm not used to it," he said. "Usually we go on things together. And it's less – I mean, people aren't meant to try and kill us."

"They just do it anyway," Spencer said, and Jon huffed a laugh, breath warm against Spencer's ear.

He said, "It must be – Brendon and you, it's um. Pretty recent, right?"

"Yeah," Spencer said, and Jon nodded.

"That must be hard."

"I think it would be anyway," Spencer said, and looked up at Jon. "I think – you and Ryan aren't—"

"No!" Jon said, as though it was a question.

"—but I think it's just as," Spencer said, and swallowed hard. For a moment, Jon stared at him, eyes very bright.

"You're a good Captain," he said. "I mean – nothing really bad has happened yet."

"Yet," Spencer said, and rubbed his eyes. "I don't know if that's me, or luck."

Jon smiled at him, very slightly, and tugged an arm around Spencer's shoulders. He was much shorter than Spencer, but slumped like this, Spencer could pretend he wasn't, could pretend that Jon could push him around and take care of him easier than anything else. Jon lowered his head and when he spoke, his mouth brushed Spencer's temple, like a kiss.

"It's you," he said.

\---

Jon put the chains around Ryan's wrists, binding them tight enough that they wouldn't look suspicious, but not enough to hurt him. He clicked the lock gently, showed Ryan again the right way to thrust his wrists apart if he needed to break free unexpectedly, and then draped the end of the chain over Ryan's shoulder, ready for Brendon to take it when they disembarked.

"Shields working?" Ryan asked absently, and Jon nodded.

"We look like a standard cargo ship," he said. "Should be fine."

"Uses a lot of fuel, that kind of imaging," Ryan said, twisting his fingers together as well as he could when they were bound by the cold iron. "And we already had to take one unplanned fuel stop, after the attack—"

"It'll be alright," Jon said. "It will last. Me and Spence'll be fine."

"Okay," Ryan said, and Spencer and Brendon came out into the cargo bay. Spencer's face was drawn and worried, and Brendon's smile looked tight and frightened around the edges. Spencer's fingers were curled around Brendon's wrist. Ryan tried not to look.

"Landing in thirty seconds, guys," Pete said. "Smooth descent anticipated."

Ryan turned to Jon. "See you in a day or two," he said, and Jon looked at him seriously, pushed Ryan's hair out of his face. Ryan swallowed. "It's weird," he said, soft, "not doing this with you," and Jon nodded.

"Take care of yourself," he said, voice rough, and then he wrapped Ryan in a hug. Ryan couldn't hold on like he wanted to, chains pulling his arms tight and constricting behind his back, but he leaned into Jon and rested his face in Jon's hair, breathing him in.

"Alright," he said, and the door made a faint hissing sound behind them as it began to lower itself. Ryan stepped away and looked awkwardly at Spencer. "I'll – bye," he said.

Spencer stared at him, face unreadable. "Good luck," he said. "Is the camera positioned correctly?"

"Top button," Ryan said, nodding down at his shirt.

"Okay," Spencer said. "Be careful."

"Yes," Ryan said, and took a few steps towards the doorway. He stopped to wait for Brendon, though, and this time he didn't look away when Brendon flung himself at Spencer, when Spencer dragged him down with both hands clenched in Brendon's shirt and kissed him hard and desperate, Brendon clinging to Spencer. Ryan blinked.

"Be _careful_ ," Spencer said, again, and Brendon nodded blindly, smoothed his fingers over Spencer's face, kissed him again some more, short, soft kisses, until Spencer cleared his throat and took a step backwards. Ryan darted a glance at Jon, and realised Jon was staring openly, too. His eyes were very dark. Ryan's fingers twitched in his chains.

"Bye, Brendon," Jon said, and Brendon crossed the floor to him and hugged him tightly. Jon hugged him back, seemingly instinctive, and all of a sudden Ryan stopped feeling small and unsure and afraid, and started feeling really fucking pissed off.

Brendon _kissed Jon_ , leaned up and kissed him short and sweet but decidedly not chaste, licking at Jon's mouth until he opened and let Brendon in. Ryan wanted to kill Brendon, kill Jon, too, and this time he did look away, turned smartly on his heel and strode down through the open doorway and onto Vesper7's soil, because the unknown dangers in front of him were far better than watching Brendon Urie steal everything, _everything_ that had once belonged to Ryan.

Brendon appeared next to him, taking the loose end of the chain off Ryan's shoulder and giving it a light, friendly tug. His mouth was very, very red. "Ready?" he said breathlessly, and Ryan glared. Brendon grinned, turned over his shoulder to wave cheerfully, and then set off, forcing Ryan to tread alongside him.

"Hey," he said, after Ryan had listened to the rumbling behind them that heralded the _Fever_ taking off and resolutely not turned around, "hey, you alright?"

"Fuck you," Ryan snarled.

Brendon started to laugh. "Hey, come on," he said. "That's not very nice, I mean—"

" _You're_ not very nice," Ryan said. "You're a – intrusive, thieving, selfish _brat_."

Brendon smiled at him, smug and wicked, eyes dark. "I'm greedy," he said, "but I'm not selfish, Ross. You know that."

Ryan breathed in sharply and kept walking, refused to listen to anything else Brendon said, any of his amused, half-laughing "hey, Ryan, hey"s. After a little while they came to the first area of town, and then they both fell silent, because Vesper7 was a planet of poverty, tiny towns made up of dirt roads and houses that were falling apart. Ryan hated more than anything how much he could forget, how easy it was to forget, and he felt renewed anger to the planet state trying to rule this place all on its own, rebelling against the Union with trite propaganda about individuality and the need to oppose a centralised government, when really all they were doing was keeping their people from all but the most base needs.

Including sex slaves, apparently. Ryan drew in a deep breath and wiggled his fingers a little, twisting his wrists together.

"You alright?" Brendon asked, laughter gone from his voice, and Ryan nodded.

"Um," he said, after a moment. "How long do you think this thing will take?"

They'd talked the whole thing through enough that Ryan knew exactly the amount of time it would or would not take, the estimates and judgement calls they'd all made, but now the _Fever_ was very far away, and the town was ugly and lonely. Brendon didn't point any of that out, anyway, just said, "A day. Two at the most. We get in, get evidence, call Spence and Jon, get out. It'll be easy. Wait and see."

"Right," Ryan said, nodding. "Right, I. Easy, yeah."

"Are you still mad at me?" Brendon asked, and Ryan shot a sharp look at him.

"I hate you," he said, icily, and Brendon laughed.

"Good," he said. "Keep on with that."

"Yeah?" Ryan snapped. "That work for you?"

"It'll work for you," Brendon said. "You're free. You're just playing a role. Keep hating me, and them, and don't forget."

"Whatever," Ryan grumbled, but Brendon made sense, and Ryan stopped rubbing his bound hands together, the restless movement only making him more jittery and upset.

They had to walk through three more towns before they were due to arrive at the district with the slaves; imaging shields or not around the _Fever_ , it had been too risky to drop them off closer. It was hard going, Ryan's balance off-centre and awkward, with Brendon keeping him steady in between towns but having to walk ahead of Ryan to keep up appearances whenever they were in populated districts. Ryan was wearing clothes that were deemed acceptable for slaves, and that meant thin, fragile shoes, and the stones underfoot dug into the soles of his feet, made each stumbling footstep painful.

"A little way longer," Brendon murmured, as they passed out from yet another town, the houses fading behind them. Ryan hated him, he did, and he couldn't _believe_ Brendon's nerve when it came to Jon, but he stumbled close and leaned against Brendon anyway, breathing out against his warm neck.

They reached their destination eventually, as was always the case, and Ryan let Brendon drag him a little more, stumbled over his own feet and even tripped once, slamming down hard on his knees until Brendon tugged him mercilessly to his feet. He felt small and like he'd lost all the time of being free, but he kept his gaze fixed on Brendon's straight, proud back and it wasn't so bad. He imagined he could see the _Fever_ hovering just out of sight, and even though it wasn't, it was enough to keep him passing through the dirty town, with the unfriendly faces peering out of grimy windows at him.

The slavehouse was marked out by a faded sign swinging above it that said _Mdm Ann's_ , just like it had looked in the photos, and Ryan bowed his head to keep from rolling his eyes. Brendon jerked him inside, not looking at him – they'd decided, with very little discussion, that Brendon was to be one of the indifferent slave owners, not the cruel kind – and Ryan just caught himself from tripping over the doorstep and clenched his jaw at the smell of cheap incense and, underneath that, aphrodisiacs. He and Spencer used to shut down a lot of pleasure slave houses, when the Union had just come into power. He didn't think he'd ever forget the smell, but he'd hoped, when he left the _Fever_ , that he'd never have to experience it again, let alone under the guise of a candidate for it.

"I'm Darcy Collins," Brendon said to the guy behind the wooden counter at the front. "Someone told me this was a good place to offload merchandise."

The guy cast a disinterested eye over both of them. "Paperwork," he said, handing some over. "Take a seat. Someone will be with you in just a little while."

Mostly, Ryan realised, as he was forced to sit on the floor beside Brendon, it was just boring. His arms were stiff and cramped already, his feet aching, and add to that the requirement for him to have his knees pulled up to his chest and his head bowed and he was uncomfortable and tired and cross. Really, though, it was just an uncomfortable position and a long wait, and Ryan could deal with that, even if the guy behind the desk's definition of _just a little while_ was somewhat lacking.

After about half an hour, two men came out and spoke to Brendon in a bored drawl, discussing points of sale and references, and Brendon handed over some more of the forged papers Pete had made up earlier that week. Almost immediately after that, a woman came out and took stock of them both, before nodding decisively and disappearing, and Ryan thought then that they might be moving, but they were left alone yet again.

Brendon bent down, in the pretence of fixing his shoelace. "I've got images of the paperwork they've given me," he said, in a low voice, "but it's not going to be enough just yet, they've been careful to phrase things as ambiguously as they can get away with and still have them legal. I think we're going to have to try and make it to the stocks."

"How far away do you think they'll be?" Ryan whispered.

"You couldn't see properly," Brendon said, "but this building is large, the biggest in all of the towns so far. The front is a bit of a façade; I think it'd stretch on a fair way back, and probably underground, as well."

Ryan nodded, and Brendon leaned back, stretching his legs out in front of him. They sat quietly for a while longer, until the woman remerged. She was smiling, very slightly. Ryan could see peeking up through his hair, and there was something lazy and pleased about her.

"This way, please, Mr. Collins," she said, and Brendon stood up, yanking Ryan to his feet with a swift jerk of the chain. "We apologise for the wait."

"No need to apologise," Brendon said idly, examining his nails. "I'm planning on staying the night here anyway, before I head home tomorrow."

"And where is home?" she asked, still smiling over her shoulder at him.

"Vesper3," Brendon said. "I mentioned on the paperwork."

"Of course," the woman said. "It slipped my mind."

They went through a rickety door at the back, and Ryan blinked at the sudden cool, marble floor beneath his feet, impossibly different from the splintering floorboards back in the main room. He dared a glance up, and sucked in a breath; the room was lavish and cold, furnished sparely but expensively, with high tech security in all the corners.

"Well," Brendon said. "This isn't half so shabby."

"We like to provide for our clients in comfort," the woman said smoothly, and led them out of the foyer and down a corridor lit by bright, fluorescent lights, security cameras in each corner. Ryan eyed them uneasily. As long as he could get out, Brendon had said, he'd be able to get Spencer and Jon in, and Ryan _knew_ that he'd only have to be on his own in here for a very little while, but it was still discomforting as hell.

They went through a final door, and then a man said, "Now, Brendon, I know geography was never your strong point, but Vesper _3_? I thought you knew how to _count_ , at least," and Brendon froze, so abruptly that Ryan slammed up into his back.

There was a man standing and smiling at them, powerfully built and wearing a dark suit, with a group of other, similarly dangerously looking men and women ranged around him. Brendon said, shakily, "Fancy seeing—"

"Yes, yes," the man said. "Taken up slavetrading, Brendon? And under an assumed name, no less. Why does that not seem very likely to me?"

"Brendon?" Ryan said, voice low, and the man laughed.

"I don't think he's much of a slave, either, if you've let him in on your secret," he said, and Brendon stood completely still, eyes huge and frozen in his face, throat working.

" _Brendon_ ," Ryan said, low and panicked, and the man took a few steps forward.

"On the _Fever_ now, aren't you? We looked you up, just now. Lucky there are no photos of you or your enigmatic captain. I'm touched by your choice of middle name, though. So kind of you to think of us after you ran away, left us in the hands of the Union, after we treatedyou with such kindness."

"Oh, shit," Ryan said, and the man looked at him properly for the first time.

"Nice to meet you," he said. "I'm Governor Boyd."

Ryan blinked. _I was eleven_ , Brendon said in his head, and Ryan thought about how small an eleven year old Brendon must have looked, how sweet and stupidly charming and friendly, and he wondered what the Governor had seen when Brendon called him _Dad_ , what was inside a man like that to make him respond with a whip, to scar Brendon's proud, straight back and send him running for the first ship that would take him.

"Huh," Ryan said, and yanked his wrists in opposite directions neatly. The chain gave, slipping in a coil to pool by Brendon's feet, where he was still absently holding his end, and Ryan stepped forward neatly, and easily.

"Ryan," Brendon said suddenly, startled out of his stupor.

"You're an asshole," Ryan told Governor Boyd, and punched him in the face.

For a second, everything was a vague, triumphant blur, and Ryan launched himself properly at the Governor, knuckles smarting, but then he was tackled by about five people. Above him, Brendon was calling his name, but Ryan couldn't see him in the blur of bodies, fists and feet slamming into his ribs, his face, his head, until he curled up in a ball with his arms wrapped around his head and breathed in panicked, hurting sobs. They didn't stop, attacking him with a single-minded brutality, and Ryan wondered very quietly if this was what dying felt like, these impossible, sustained bursts of pain, and then he saw red, and black, and nothing at all.

\---

He woke up, and hurt _everywhere_ ; a sharp, terrifying pain in his ribs that made every breath burn, wrist swollen and sore and dangling at an angle that felt wrong even without opening his eyes, head pounding. When he tried to open his eyes only one would, and he raised a hand cautiously to touch the other, groaning a little at the new burst of pain, white behind his eyes. His left eye was swollen shut, hot and puffy behind his fingers.

" _Fuck_ ," someone said, and Ryan realised that he wasn't lying on the ground, that he was cradled gently half in someone's lap.

He peered upwards in the gloom, and said, voice shaking, "Brendon?"

"Jesus, Ryan," Brendon said, and lowered his head enough for his hair to brush against Ryan's face a little. He had closed his eyes, face pale and wrecked in the dim light. "I thought you were – comatose, or. _Fuck_."

"I wish I was comatose," Ryan croaked, and Brendon let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. Ryan swallowed and said, "Are you hurt?"

"No," Brendon said. "No, I – they shoved me around a bit but I'm fine, I'm. Ryan. God."

Ryan really, really wanted to say something like _I'm fine_ or _don't freak out_ , but he felt small and helpless and in a lot, a lot, a _lot_ of pain. "Hurts," he whispered, and wished he had enough strength to turn and curl into Brendon, hide his face against him.

"I know," Brendon said, voice rough. He touched Ryan's face lightly, with warm, shaking fingers. "I know. It'll – Spence and Jon will come for us. Wait and see, they'll come."

"It's – not in the plan," Ryan managed, and Brendon laughed, voice wobbling.

"You've got the camera, remember?" he said. "Which means that we've got the evidence we need, by the way – they led us past a lot of pens and holding cells along the way. But also it means Spencer and Jon saw what happened, they know what's going on, and you think there's any way in the world Spencer won't find you?"

"Spencer hates me," Ryan said.

"No," Brendon said, sure for the first time. "No, Spencer couldn't hate you if he tried. He's on his way now. I know it."

Ryan closed his eyes and somehow, miraculously, drifted back into unconsciousness. He woke again what felt like only a little while later (Brendon told him, quietly, that it had been two days) to Brendon coaxing water to his mouth, holding it there patiently and steadily while Ryan struggled to swallow the tiny amounts he could take at a time, until Ryan had had his fill, and then Brendon stroked his grimy hair again until he was asleep.

The only advantage to the relentless aching of his body was that it did keep him asleep for most of the time. He woke up now and again to Brendon giving him more water, or trying to talk him into eating (Ryan turned his head restlessly, lips clamped tightly together; the idea of food made the nausea in his stomach rise unbearably), or, once, making tiny, desperate noises that Ryan thought was him trying to hold back sobs. He raised his hand and brushed his fingers along Brendon's cheek, and Brendon turned his face to Ryan's hand and breathed in raggedly, the sound loud in the dark, before he said, "Okay. Okay," and Ryan let the darkness roll back over him.

At one point he woke up to the sound of unfamiliar voices in the dark. "—moving you two, soon," someone said, as if they were reciting a well-learned lesson. "Governor Boyd wants you back on Vesper9."

Brendon said, sounding almost bored, "Sure, okay. I guess we can fit in a detour on our way home."

"Pretty fucking smug, aren't you, kid?" A new voice, harder than the first.

"I'm just not planning on sticking around much longer," Brendon said, and Ryan could practically _hear_ his shrug. "Soon as Ryan's well enough, we'll be off."

"Maybe we'll just make sure your Ryan doesn't get well enough," the second voice said.

"Good luck," Brendon said, deadly soft, and Ryan stirred restlessly, a groan breaking past his lips when his ribs sparked painfully. The men laughed and turned, feet echoing on the floor as they left, and Brendon lowered his head. "It's gonna be alright," he said. "You'll see. It'll be alright."

"M'glad you're here," Ryan said, and fell back into sleep.

He had frightening, vivid dreams, images that didn't leave any real memory or story in his head beyond danger and disturbing concepts that made him wake up sweating and shaking. Brendon was rarely asleep when Ryan did wake; on the occasions he was, he woke quickly too, bending to murmur in Ryan's ear and stroke his hair back from his forehead, whispering the stupid, pointless reassurances in Ryan's ears about how Spencer and Jon would be here soon, how everything would be okay, Ryan just had to wait and see.

Ryan thought that that was bullshit, but Brendon had a way of getting into his head, and later he dreamed about Spencer saying his name, Spencer close and there. When he woke up, it was Brendon, and Ryan hacked up what felt like all the fluid in his lungs and something that tasted coppery, too, before he could speak.

Brendon said, "You want water?"

"We need to get out of here," Ryan said, and drew in a sharp breath.

"Soon," Brendon said. "Soon, I promise, they won't have left us—"

"S'hard," Ryan said, breathing in shallow bursts. "For them, I – _you_ need to get out of here."

"No," Brendon said immediately, and Ryan closed his eyes, struggling to breathe properly, wishing he could sit up and be rude enough to talk Brendon into it.

His mind was just a vague blur, though, and all he could manage was, "You can – try and sneak past the guards, when they come in, won't be expecting it and – and—"

"I'm not leaving you," Brendon said.

"Not leaving," Ryan said, head spinning. "You'll come back. But you need to get out."

"No," Brendon said, low and firm, and Ryan turned his face towards Brendon as best he could, Brendon's fingers cool against his feverish skin.

"If they don't come," he said, and Brendon bent down and kissed his forehead, so light Ryan could barely feel it.

"I'm not leaving you," he said, and Ryan sighed and closed his eyes.

He slept uneasily, fractured little bits of time that were crowded with voices, footsteps on the ground outside, Brendon murmuring to him, the occasional sound of people speaking to Brendon, and Brendon proud and cold even with his voice cracking from lack of water or food. Ryan thought it was strange, had thought that flying through space for so much of his life would have meant that darkness didn't bother him, but it was frightening, this dark, and Ryan hated it, thought he could see things crawling on the edge of his vision. He gave up on being brave; at the sound of approaching footsteps, if he was awake, he closed his eyes and turned his face as well as he could to hide against the light cloth of Brendon's trousers.

Then: " _Ryan_ ," Spencer said, and for this, dream or not, Ryan opened his eyes. "Fuck," Spencer said, and he sounded broken; he leaned down and pressed his mouth to Ryan's cheek, the corner of his lips, his head, repeated, "Fuck," and Ryan blinked up at him.

"Am I awake?" he asked, and above him, Brendon laughed.

"Yeah," he said softly.

"Up and at 'em, Ross," Jon said, even though his voice sounded a little choked, tight in his throat. "Time to get out of here."

"Umn," Ryan said, and Spencer breathed out, so close to him, hands touching Ryan so gently that they couldn't hurt, restless, like he was checking all of Ryan was there. "I'm not so good at – moving, I think," Ryan said, and Spencer shook his head.

"I'll kill them," he said. "I'll fucking—"

"Gabe can kill them," Brendon said firmly. "Ryan needs a doctor, and a—"

"Yeah, come on," Jon said, and then he and Brendon were easing Ryan up out of Brendon's lap, Spencer right there, holding him up. It _hurt_ , and Ryan let out a dry sob, but Spencer was right there, fitting Ryan's good arm around his shoulders, supporting him as gently as it could.

"You're not gonna go," Ryan said, turning his face to Spencer's, eyes wide and wild. "Spencer, please, you're not gonna—"

"I'm right here," Spencer said, instead of _you were the one who left_ , or _why shouldn't I_ , and Ryan was so stupidly grateful he wanted to cry properly for the first time. "I'm here," Spencer said, "I'm with you, I've got you," and Ryan closed his eyes and let the three of them lead him out of that dark place.

\---

"Twenty hours until Trinity," Brendon said, voice tense over the intercom, and Spencer cursed, standing up to cross to the other side of the room and shake Jon awake.

"Mmmn?" Jon said, stirring, and then straightened quickly in his chair. "Is he awake?"

"No," Spencer said. "Brendon just got a lockdown on the course, though. You told me to wake you. It's twenty hours until we reach Trinity." Which meant another twenty hours before Ryan could get any help beyond the basic stitching up they'd been able to do onboard – some balm for his bruises and eye, and a hell of a lot of drugs to numb the pain. Stupid Vesper planets, Spencer thought, they'd only reached the edge of them seven hours ago, and Brendon hadn't slept since they got back on the _Fever_ , with Jon and Spencer keeping vigil on either side of Ryan's bed.

"Alright," Jon sighed, rubbing his face. Spencer smiled at him, small, and Jon smiled back up at him, eyes sad and tired. It was strange – Spencer had spent the week Brendon and Ryan were captured so furious and frightened in a blind, angry way that hadn't allowed for anything but plans, getting Gabe to get his hackers working on the problem back in Mettis and find a way to crack the system on Vesper7 now that they had footage to help; Spencer and Jon going down and grabbing the first powerful looking person they saw as a safety measure hostage to break their way through. Jon had been strong and constant by his side through it all, and suddenly they were both reduced to inaction, waiting helplessly by Ryan's bed.

Besides which, Jon kept trying to drop hints, saying things like, "I like this ship," and "You know, the Ambassador gig isn't really my thing, I think." Spencer appreciated it, he did, but it wasn't going to fix Ryan while he was hurt, and it wasn't going to fix Ryan when he was better, and Spencer wasn't going to see Ryan imprisoned again. It fucking hurt, but he'd only just set him free.

"You should sleep some more," Spencer said. "There's nothing else to do, for now."

"Thanks," Jon said, and slumped back in his chair. Spencer returned to his own, drawing it close to Ryan's bed and taking Ryan's hand carefully between his. Ryan's lips were dry and cracked, and Spencer picked up the wet cloth by the bedside and pressed it lightly to Ryan's mouth, squeezed a few drops between his parted lips, not enough to make him choke.

Maybe half an hour later, he was dozing face down on the covers when Ryan said, voice rough and breaking, "Spence?"

"Right here," Spencer said automatically, looking up, and Ryan looked at him, eyes half-closed.

"Feel better," he said, and Spencer swallowed hard.

"That's good," he said. "That's good, Ryan, I'm glad."

"Tired," Ryan sighed, and Spencer nodded.

"It's the drugs," he said. "For the pain. We're flying to Trinity, Brendon's got the whole system working at full speed. We'll be at Gerard and Mikey's, soon. They'll get your bones fixed and stuff in no time."

"Oh, good," Ryan breathed, and Spencer huffed a laugh. "Spence," Ryan said, and shifted very slightly, trying to move to the side. Spencer stared down at him, chest aching. "Please," Ryan said, eyes fluttering closed.

"Yeah," Spencer said. "Yes, Ryan," and he pulled back the covers and eased in beside Ryan, curling around him carefully. Ryan sighed again and fell back to sleep, and Spencer lay very still, watching him.

He slept eventually too, waking fitfully and lying awake to stare at the ceiling while Ryan shifted and made small, unhappy sounds next to him, flinching away even from Spencer's touch. At one point Jon offered him food, but Spencer shook his head; he didn't think he could face eating, just then. Jon hovered over Ryan, and Spencer fell asleep again like that, watching the fear on Jon's face as he ran his fingers over the bruising on Ryan's face, just short of actually touching.

Eventually he woke up again to Brendon leaning over him, shaking his shoulder. Spencer blinked up at him and Brendon smiled, dark shadows under his eyes. Jon was snuffling a little in his sleep in the chair.

"We're five minutes from Trinity," Brendon said. "I called Mikey and Gerard ahead, they're gonna wait at the docks and come up here so he doesn't have to move again. But I thought you might wanna be awake."

Spencer climbed out of bed, yawning, and Brendon smoothed the covers back, hands shaking violently. "God," Spencer said. "Did you not sleep at all?"

"We might have been followed," Brendon said, sounding a little frantic. "The Governor could have come for us, could have hurt you all because of me, and—"

"Wasn't your fault," Spencer said, and kissed him, warm and soft. "You did so good. Kept him alive."

"We need him," Brendon said, shuddering a little in Spencer's arms. "All three of us, we—"

"Yes, Spencer," Jon said, voice husky with sleep, and Spencer swallowed hard and pulled away from Brendon.

"Go get some sleep," he told him. "I'm going to go and meet Mikey and Gerard."

Jon watched him leave, eyes dark and intent, and Spencer shuddered under the weight of them.

\---

"You _promised_ ," Spencer said, and Gabe laughed, kicking back in his seat, arms behind his head. He managed to project impossibly cocky over hundreds of miles and a video connection. Spencer was unwillingly impressed.

"Yeah, yeah," Gabe said. "You and Urie can have your vacation, I'm just messing with you."

"Good," Spencer said, setting aside the handful of notes he'd been going through. He'd already done the major debriefing, while Mikey and Gerard were fixing Ryan up back on Trinity; now it was the little, finicky things. Like – "Um, and we'll drop the Ambassadors on Mettis in three or four days," he said, and Gabe looked at him curiously.

"Really?" he said. "I was kind of expecting you to petition us to find some new Ambassadors."

"It's their job," Spencer said, not meeting Gabe's eyes. "And the _Fever_ can be run fine by a two person crew."

"I wasn't really talking about jobs," Gabe said, and Spencer cleared his throat.

"I'll talk to you after our vacation," he said. "Which will be at least a month, I'm just saying."

"Lazy bastards," Gabe said, waving a hand. "Okay, fine. Have fun, Spence. And good work, again."

"Thanks," Spencer said, and Pete shut off the connection, watching him seriously. "Don't you start, too," Spencer said.

"Start what?"

Spencer turned around, and Ryan smiled at him tentatively, leaning against the doorway. He was holding his once-broken wrist carefully, but his swollen eye was just a black one, now, lip split, face bruised, but better. He was holding himself straighter, too, and Spencer thanked whatever high deities were listening again for Gerard and Mikey Way, for their ability to heal even the most fractured of bones. He drew in a breath.

"Hey," he said. "How are you feeling?"

"A bit sore," Ryan said, still smiling very slightly. "Better, though."

Spencer laughed awkwardly. "It would be hard not to be."

"I don't remember much," Ryan said. "It's all kinda blurry."

"That makes sense," Spencer said, and Ryan tilted his head to the side, watching Spencer steadily, face clear and calm.

"I remember you," he said, and Spencer stared back at him helplessly for a moment before he cleared his throat.

"You remember what happened?" he asked. "Or is me telling you that you were a moron good enough?"

Ryan smiled crookedly. "No, I remember how it happened," he said. "I guess it wasn't the best move in the world."

"Fucking right," Spencer said, fiercely. "You could have been _killed_ ,Ryan. You could have got _Brendon_ killed. It was stupid and irresponsible, and." He stopped, and Ryan watched him patiently. Spencer drew in a breath and said, "How'd it feel, punching Governor Boyd?"

Ryan laughed. "Really fucking awesome," he said, and Spencer grinned, shaking his head.

"I can't believe you got to," he said. "I've been waiting five years. Damn it."

"I've got talents," Ryan said, and smiled again, big and real. "Who were you talking to, just now?"

"Gabe," Spencer said, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels. "Final details and things."

Ryan smiled. "Brendon said you have a vacation now," he said. "Gabe confirm it?"

"No missions for at least a month," Spencer said, nodding. "It'll be great."

"Any plans on direction?" Ryan asked.

"I'm thinking somewhere with a clean sea," Spencer said, a little dreamily. "We went surfing, about three years ago. Only for a week, but. It was good."

"Oh," Ryan said, and smiled again, rubbing at his face with his good hand. "It sounds good."

"Yeah," Spencer said. He cleared his throat and turned to pick up the papers from the desk, said, "Anyway, we'll drop you and Jon off on Mettis first. Should be there in a couple of days, the way we're moving."

Ryan didn't say anything; when Spencer turned around, he was staring, face white, frozen in place. Spencer swallowed hard and said, "Ryan," and Ryan widened his eyes and then shook his head, like he was trying to wake up.

"Right," he said. "Of course."

"I mean," Spencer said, not looking at him, "we all have work to do, and—"

"Yes," Ryan said. "Yes, I. Of course. I'm pretty much packed, anyway, I just wanted to. Check the date."

"Great," Spencer said, chest hurting. "Well, it shouldn't be too long."

"Good," Ryan said. "We'll have a lot of work to do."

He turned and walked away, and Spencer sank back down into his cheek, rubbed at his face with his hands. "I'm not starting anything," Pete said, "but you're a bit of a moron, Spence."

"I'm the only one on this ship who's keeping their head," Spencer said. "Things like this don't work. Ryan left a long time ago. It's not like he came back by choice."

"I think he came back the only way he knew how," Pete said, and Spencer stood up and walked away.

He'd half hoped that the suddenly unhappy atmosphere on the ship, the tension (Jon) and barely concealed anger (Brendon) and awkwardness (Ryan, who was, most of the time, nowhere to be found) would mean that the days would drag, the eighty odd hours before they were due to land on Mettis stretching on for the whole stupid trip combined yet again, but they didn't. They flew past, impossibly fast, until Spencer felt he was clutching at moments rather than periods of time, tiny parts of each day, like Jon taking him and Brendon down to the engine room and running through a series of cheats they could use if things started to break down again and again, or stopping outside a doorway to see Brendon and Ryan sitting together in the dark, heads bent close, talking in low voices that Spencer couldn't hear.

He wanted to do something, some form of acknowledgment or recognition, but everyone else on the ship including his goddamn _computer_ didn't like him very much, so Spencer resorted to going through backlogs of paperwork, from this mission and the four before them, sending them through resolutely to headquarters until William sent him a ten second video message, just William with his eyebrows raised, wondering if Spencer was okay.

Twenty hours before they were due to land on Mettis, Spencer went and played the album he and Ryan had loved, the song they had danced to, sat on the floor with his head tilted back against the wall and played it loudly enough for it to float through the entire ship. Brendon didn't come down and tell him off for blocking out potential warnings about things coming their way, but Ryan didn't come down, either, and Spencer waited alone for half an hour after the music had ended before he got up and went to bed.

He woke up with Brendon curled in next to him, in his boxers with bare skin pressed up tight against Spencer. Spencer untangled himself enough to sit up and pull his own shirt off, wanting to get closer, and Brendon made a small, unhappy sound in his sleep, curled one arm around Spencer's side. Spencer pressed his face into Brendon's hair and wondered where Ryan and Jon were. Last night – or what they called _night_ , out in the endless black – he'd wandered past Ryan's rooms before he'd gone to bed and they'd been empty; he'd almost panicked, before he thought to peer into Jon's (unlocked) bedroom, and found the two of them tucked together. Jon had been awake, and he'd looked up at Spencer, eyes unreadable.

Spencer had said, "I'm glad you two are happy."

"We're not happy," Jon had told him, and he hadn't looked away from Spencer's face, and Spencer had felt the too familiar pull of want in his stomach.

"It would be impossible," he had said.

"For one," Jon had answered, "we'd have to get a bigger bed," and Spencer had turned and fled.

Now, he ran his fingers down Brendon's spine, mindless, and Brendon shifted in closer to him. Spencer's bed was pretty big, he thought absently, and then hated himself for it, the stupid lapse. He wasn't going to sleep again. He got up, went up to the bridge and made Pete pull up a countdown of estimated time before they arrived.

After a little while, Brendon came up and watched it with him, but he didn't come close to Spencer, didn't touch.

When the countdown reached an hour, Spencer said, "You want to?" and Brendon made an angry, scoffing sound.

"You're a coward, Spencer Smith," he said, and slipped out of the room. Ryan and Jon took a while to get ready, and by the time they emerged it was ten minutes before landing, and Spencer was waiting for them down in the dock.

Jon looked miserable, but Ryan looked perfectly calm, checking his comm device as he came down the stairs. "Z's in town," he said, "she wants us to come meet her new mechanic when we get there, Tennessee – isn't Tennessee a planet?"

"It used to be a state," Jon said, but it sounded automatic, and he looked at Spencer accusingly.

Ryan put his comm away with a flick and smiled, said, "Well, I guess this is it."

"I've called Gabe," Spencer said. "There'll be transport to pick you up on the other side of the Primen Fields. That's only about a half hour walk – will you be able to make it?"

"Sure," Ryan said. "What time is it?"

"Eleven AM local time," Pete said, and Ryan looked up at him. Pete smiled. "Good to see you again, Ross," he said. "Don't be a stranger."

"I'll page you sometime," Ryan said agreeably, and Brendon hunched in on himself. There was a hickey just above his collarbone that Spencer was pretty sure he hadn't left, and Jon's mouth was redder than usual. He looked away.

"Alright, Pete," Spencer said, "bring her down."

They landed a little while later, gently. The _Fever_ seemed to be flying better at the moment, Spencer thought absently, and then he remembered Ryan at the controls, Jon in the engine room, and scowled, before he wiped his face pointedly for a smile, turning as the door started to head down.

"Jon," he started to say, but Jon was wrapped up in a hug with Brendon, and Ryan was typing something into his comm, frowning slightly. When he stopped, it was only because Brendon had a hold on him, arms tight around Ryan, enough that Spencer wanted to say _careful_ , head ducked over Ryan's shoulder, talking low and fast in Ryan's ear while Jon watched. Ryan's pleasant look was gone, replaced by something still and intent, and he nodded again and again, fingers digging into Brendon's back.

While Spencer was thus distracted, Jon managed to sneak up on him, hugging him close, and Spencer reacted sluggishly, turning into Jon. Jon pressed his mouth against Spencer's jaw, hot and open, and Spencer drew in a breath and stepped away.

"It was a pleasure to meet you," he said quietly. "I'd like to see you again, sometime."

Jon's mouth twisted bitterly, and he turned and stepped down the open door, onto the green grass of Mettis. Ryan touched Spencer's shoulder lightly, and Spencer turned again, and smiled at him.

"It was good to see you again," he said.

"Among other things," Ryan agreed, dryly, and Spencer couldn't help but laugh. "Hey," Ryan said. "Take care of yourself."

"You too," Spencer said.

Ryan nodded, and then he turned, and walked away. Spencer watched him go, hopelessly, watched the door close, stared at the grey metal as Pete said dully, "lifting off," and the low hum of the _Fever_ built up again.

He looked up, at where Brendon was watching him, arms folded. "Fuck you," Brendon said.

"I didn't," Spencer began, but Brendon cut through him.

"You're both so fucking stubborn," he said. "But you _started_ this one, Spence, so fuck you."

"He started it," Spencer said, and then when Brendon opened his mouth again he shook his head and held up a hand. "No, Brendon, I'm not – I'm not fighting with him, I'm just, he doesn't want the _Fever_. He – he was hurt and maybe it felt safe, but he didn't want her then and he doesn't want us – doesn't want her now."

"You're an idiot," Brendon said, and shook his head, turning away. "I'm going to fly our ship."

Spencer went and sat on a crate. He couldn't quite take his eyes away from the door, even as he calculated things, where they'd have to stop for fuel, how much credit he could talk Gabe into giving them, where they'd go on vacation. Whether to book one room or two. Whether Brendon would want him, now. Spencer didn't want himself very much at that moment.

"Fuck," Brendon said, over the intercom. "I think – shit, Spence, can you get up here?"

Spencer rose quickly and raced up the stairs, bursting into the bridge and half expecting to see Governor Boyd and a fleet of ships bearing down on them, or a new meteor storm. He didn't see anything like that, though, just Brendon glaring at the screen and then typing furiously at the console.

"What's going on?" Spencer asked.

"We're being _hacked_ ," Brendon said. "Someone's trying to – change the – and I can't get it back – if I could just trace the signal—"

"Fuck," Spencer said, swallowing hard. The _Fever_ was a recognisable ship, and an old one, but they hadn't been hacked yet. He couldn't imagine the kind of damage someone could inflict if Brendon had no way of fighting back from the inside; controlling their direction, shutting down their life support, steering them straight into missiles or buildings or _planets_.

Brendon was the best, though, and a moment later, he crowed, "Got 'em!"

"Who is it?" Spencer asked.

"Huh," Brendon said, and then looked up. Onscreen, Pete looked slightly guilty. Then Pete began to giggle, and Brendon began to smile.

¬

\---

"Ryan," Jon said, "put the damn comm away."

Ryan looked up, mouth twisting, but Jon actually looked pissed, so he sighed and snapped it closed, tucking it back in his pocket. He said, "There's no need to be so stupid. We'll head back to the capital and be on our feet again in no time – it's just that with the, the, with Governor Boyd, and you got shot before, and we're just a little bit—"

"So help me, Ryan, if you finish that sentence with _fragile_ or something like that—"

"We just shouldn't freak out!" Ryan said. "Things are different now! We knew that getting on the ship, we were doing _fine_ , if you could just refrain from making friends with every damn person we ever meet—"

"They're not our friends," Jon said, voice rough. "Fuck you, Ryan, don't lie like that. Don't make shit into something casual so it'll suit you more."

"I'm not," Ryan said, but Jon glared at him so he shut up, walking with his hands in his pockets.

It was nice, Ryan thought, to be back on a planet again for a long time, and a nice planet at that, grass beneath his feet, the breeze cool and refreshing against his face. That was one of the many reasons he'd left the _Fever_ in the first place, getting cabin fever cooped up in the ship all the time, cooped up with Spencer, who knew – who had known him better than anyone else in the world, was more familiar than anything else, and still made Ryan's skin itch, made him restless and hungry. The air around them was big and open and cool, and Ryan could stop wondering about Jon's thumb tracing his lip, Jon's hand stroking through his hair at night, he could have his best friend back and his worlds back, and none of them would ever have to be defined by a ship he was done with.

There was a low humming sound behind them, gradually rising, and the sound of traffic on a road ahead, wind at Ryan's back. Ryan walked across the springy grass and started to smile, and Jon looked over his shoulder and stopped. "Ryan," he said. "I think you should turn around."

"I don't need to," Ryan said. "I know that ship."

He turned anyway, though, and Brendon was the best pilot Ryan had ever known, brought the _Fever_ up close without landing, so that the door could slide all the way down.

Spencer was standing on the edge, and he held out his hand and Ryan clasped it with his good one, jumped enough that Spencer could use his momentum to pull him up the short distance between the _Fever_ and the ground. Jon laughed, bright and clear, and Ryan put his arms around Spencer's neck and kissed him. They stumbled backwards, Spencer clutching at Ryan, pulling him in close, running his hands restlessly up Ryan's back to cup his face in his hands, Spencer's hands warm and dear, keeping him right there, licking into his mouth, and there was nowhere else in all the worlds that Ryan wanted to be.

"Hi," Brendon said, over the intercom, and then Jon leaned on the button on the other side and said,

"Brendon, they won't stop making out, I'm feeling neglected."

"Come up here," Brendon said. "Is everyone onboard? Can I close the door? Captain? Spencer, dude?"

"Tell him to shut up," Spencer breathed, and Ryan laughed wildly and pushed forwards again, shoving Spencer back against the wall, biting at his bottom lip. Spencer gasped and tangled his hands in Ryan's hair, yanking him down, and Ryan fumbled, frustrated, with Spencer's shirt, trying to get that _stupid_ jacket off and unbutton the rest, and Spencer was laughing and pushing a leg between Ryan's, and nothing in Ryan's head was blurry, everything was clear and distinct and right at his fingertips.

"Oh, you were serious," Brendon said, his real voice, not distorted by the intercom, and Ryan reluctantly broke away to see Brendon standing at the top of the stairs, smiling down at them. Ryan thought, _I'm going to kiss you so fucking hard, and Jon, too,_ but they were both smiling at him, bright and stupid and glad, and he didn't think they needed telling. Spencer moved up behind him, pressing close, and Ryan leaned back.

"You got taller," he said.

"Only a little," Spencer said, which wasn't exactly true, but Ryan loved him for it anyway, pushed himself back into Spencer's space and kissed him again, because he could, because he wanted to.

In the background, he was vaguely aware of Brendon and Jon laughing, of Brendon saying, "Pete, dude, did you even _need_ to hack yourself?"

"I thought it had more of, y'know, the dramatic flair," Pete said, and Spencer grinned against Ryan's mouth.

"Guys?" Brendon said. "Look, I'm loving the reunion and all, but the landing dock isn't the most brilliant place in the world, and I've still gotta steer the ship if we can put off the orgy just a _little_ while longer—"

Jon was laughing, and Spencer looked vaguely disappointed; Ryan met Brendon's eyes and Brendon beamed at him, just as bright as he'd been in the holding cells on Vesper9.

"Right," Ryan said. "Right."

He took Spencer's hand in his, linking their fingers together, and Jon's in the other, and then he smiled at Brendon and Brendon laughed and dashed up the stairs, leading them up to the bridge, and all the stars beyond.


End file.
